Matt Mueller's dashboard

Tink replied on September 25, 2008 21:01 to the question "surgery cost" in change:healthcare, inc.:

Hi Amy,

Matt gave some great advice. My Healthcare Is Killing Me will give you some tips for negotiating, which can be critical in reducing costs for uninsured patients.

Another thought is to ask your doctor how much the procedure will cost "retail" since there will not be any insurance discounts. You can tell him/her about the estimated costs you found via the internet, if they are unable to give you a "ball park" figure.

Once you decide on a place to get surgery, you can ask the billing department if they have an uninsured patient discount, or if they would be willing to give you a general discount on the bill. You can potentially ask for the same rate that Medicare patients receive or the lowest private insurance negotiated rate.

If you have any more questions, feel free to email me at kwelty@changehealthcare.com.

Good Luck!

Matt Mueller replied on September 25, 2008 20:49 to the question "surgery cost" in change:healthcare, inc.:

Hey Amy!

Thanks for the question. I've got a few resources to point you to. The first is our health issue profile for "other tendon disorders" which is what Trigger Finger typically falls under. You can view that here: https://changehealthcare.com/health_i...

As you will notice you can enter your zipcode to get pricing information for the general range of inpatient/outpatient costs at hospitals and docs in your area. This should give you a good overview of what is fair and what isn't. Depending on insurance/medicare of course your actual out of pocket responsibility may vary.

The second resource is a report from our My Healthcare is Killing Me field guide on "Questions to ask before surgery." You can find this online here: http://www.myhealthcareiskillingme.co...

In addition you may want to download My Healthcare is Killing Me for free (http://www.myhealthcareiskillingme.co...) as it gives you some negotiation techniques to help lower your out of pocket expense.

Thanks!

mike replied on July 11, 2008 18:18 to the question "Does goplan integrate well with subversion?" in Goplan:

hi fred i need a project management tool, goplan seems great but without the integration of subversion ill have to take another ... could you help me

mike started following the question "Does goplan integrate well with subversion?" in Goplan.

Eric Suesz replied on February 06, 2008 18:18 to the question "Does goplan integrate well with subversion?" in Goplan:

Fred? Fred? OMG, the aliens took Fred.

Matt Mueller replied on February 01, 2008 15:38 to the question "Does goplan integrate well with subversion?" in Goplan:

Hey Fred, any luck with this yet?

Matt Mueller replied on January 30, 2008 18:39 to the question "Does goplan integrate well with subversion?" in Goplan:

Sounds great, thanks Fred.

fred replied on January 30, 2008 18:27 to the question "Does goplan integrate well with subversion?" in Goplan:

Hey Matt - it doesn't directly integrate with subversion out of the box. However, you can use SVN hooks and the Goplan API to post messages on each svn commit, which not hard to do. I've been willing to work on an example script for a while, I'll do it tomorrow and share it with you here. Sounds good?

Matt Mueller asked a question in Goplan on January 30, 2008 15:16:

Does goplan integrate well with subversion?

Does goplan integrate with svn, so that at the very least commits are logged in the timeline, etc?

Matt Mueller set one of Matt Mueller's replies as an official response to "We're new to a HSA - how can I track it on MedBillManager?" in change:healthcare, inc.

Matt Mueller replied on January 14, 2008 13:59 to the question "We're new to a HSA - how can I track it on MedBillManager?" in change:healthcare, inc.:

Hi Colleen,

First of all, thanks for posting your question. You are right to assume that a pre-tax account includes the HSA functionality. Here are the steps you want to follow:

1) Add your HSA into the system by clicking "Add Pre-Tax Account" in the right hand sidebar. All you will be asked for at this point is a name.

2) Once you have added the HSA you will be shown a screen with the option to "Add New Period" for the account. Think of this as a time-frame in which you have to meet your deductible before being reimbursed (usually one year).

3) Fill out the begin and end date.

4) In the estimated savings field you want to put the amount you have to spend in order to meet your deductible (regardless of whether all that money is in the account at the time)

5) Then, every time you make a payment from your HSA, when you add the payment in MedBillManager you want to make sure and select the Pre-Tax Account you setup. You can check how close you are to meeting your deductible, see a list of payments made, etc. by clicking on the HSA name under Pre-Tax Accounts in the right hand sidebar and then clicking "View Payments.'

I hope that clears things up for you, let me know if you need more clarification.

Matt Mueller set one of Matt Mueller's replies as an official response to "Display "Billed Amount" instead of "Total Insurance Benefit" on listings for EOBs" in change:healthcare, inc.

Matt Mueller, an employee of change:healthcare, inc., replied on January 01, 2008 14:17 to the idea "Display "Billed Amount" instead of "Total Insurance Benefit" on listings for EOBs" in change:healthcare, inc.:

SongOfRuth,

A scanned EOB would be great! If you could just black out your personal information we would appreciate it :). We are working towards building a system where the field names when entering an EOB match your paperwork (based on the insurance you select), and your scanned EOB will put us one step closer.

So far it has been tough getting insurances to provide us with sample EOBs, but with help from users like you we are slowly moving towards having a decent database.

Fax number: 615.523.1255

Thanks again!

caparks, an employee of change:healthcare, inc., replied on January 01, 2008 14:05 to the question "Confusion re open versus closed balances?" in change:healthcare, inc.:

Your right! I often tell people to use tags as a was to group things (like multiple items, providers, etc that are associated with one episode of care or event... like a car accident or long hospital stay + associated home health). Very creative using "C#:xxxx" as a way to group and sort claims... you could even go with "eob-c#:xxxx".

The gang here have already been prompted to add "Claim #" as a new field though I also like your creative solution!

SongofRuth - You are our new Rock'n Power User. THANKS!

Matt Mueller, an employee of change:healthcare, inc., replied on January 01, 2008 14:00 to the question "Confusion re open versus closed balances?" in change:healthcare, inc.:

Exactly why we added the tag field, great usage of it. I assume you know too that you can then view all items with a given tag in the transaction log. Good to see you coming up with creative solutions that work for you!

SongOfRuth replied on December 31, 2007 23:19 to the idea "Display "Billed Amount" instead of "Total Insurance Benefit" on listings for EOBs" in change:healthcare, inc.:

For the bills/EOBs I receive, I believe that "Totalled Billed" is the most consistent number. There may be some providers who don't format their bills this way, of course.

In my particular case - esp. those blood tests I've mentioned - I pay the full amount. Which means I end up with several entries with an insurance benefit of $0 - all for the same date and the same provider which makes them all look the same.

If you like I could fax you some of these EOBs if that would be of help.

Take care,
Melody

SongOfRuth replied on December 31, 2007 23:15 to the question "Confusion re open versus closed balances?" in change:healthcare, inc.:

I know that on my EOBs there is a claim number. So all entries for that EOB (which of course now are listed as individual EOBs when I enter them) have the same claim number. Currently I put this in the TAG field. It just occurred to me that one thing I could do is to use "C#:xxx", where xxx is the claim number, to differentiate this particular tag. In this way things actually currently sort of can be grouped.

Matt Mueller set one of Matt Mueller's replies as an official response to "Display "Billed Amount" instead of "Total Insurance Benefit" on listings for EOBs" in change:healthcare, inc.

Matt Mueller, an employee of change:healthcare, inc., replied on December 31, 2007 20:57 to the idea "Display "Billed Amount" instead of "Total Insurance Benefit" on listings for EOBs" in change:healthcare, inc.:

SongOfRuth,

This is a great point. Ideally we hope you will be able to match up EOBs/Bills via date, reason for visit, provider, etc.

However I do understand how it could be confusing to see the insurance benefit amount as opposed to one of the other amounts. If we were to change the amount, would you find it easiest to match on "Total Billed" or "Amount Allowed?" Which are the fields/numbers that you most identify with/match on from your EOBs?

Thanks for all your great feedback so far.

Matt Mueller, an employee of change:healthcare, inc., replied on December 31, 2007 20:51 to the question "Confusion re open versus closed balances?" in change:healthcare, inc.:

SongofRuth,

Although I didn't get in on this conversation I reply appreciate the feedback re: multi-line EOBs. That is something we have been discussing of late, trying to settle on the best way to handle it. Although we may not get it out to you immediately I promise that this feature is high on our priority list and we will get to it soon!