No More Vacation Available, And The Doctor's Office Has Given The Pony The Business

Of course the ankle doctor has not literally given The Pony the business! I mean it in the way they used the phrase on Leave It to Beaver. To tease someone. To toy with them.

Yes, it was too good to be true. Pony getting the call to pick up his reimbursement paperwork to send to the Dept of Labor, at 10:00 a.m. the day after the office gals told him they needed the out-sourced worker to do it when she came in the next day. I have a sneaking suspicion those gals went ahead and did it themselves, after The Pony declined their offer to do it right then.

Here's the thing. Since The Pony paid his bill in full, that office has no incentive to fill out this DOL form for The Pony to get his reimbursement. They have received payment for services rendered. Why would they want to pay an out-sourced contractor for the time it takes to fill out this convoluted form? You can't really fault them for it. It's sound business practices. At least they were polite, gave it what I would most certainly call NOT their best shot, and handed over 15 pages of medical records to The Pony.

In reviewing that form Tuesday night, I saw much more wrong with it than just the lack of entries in the amount charged column. I couldn't have augmented that column if I wanted to! Three of the four codes they put opposite the charges were for OFFICE VISIT-NO CHARGE. Yes, those codes were on The Pony's billing statement, right under the other code for X-RAY charges. Which they did not bother to write in.

Overall, there were about 10 items that deviated from the detailed instructions for that form. However... since the actual codes are on the billing statement, itemized, I think that may suffice. There is no question that The Pony was billed by this medical office for treatment of his work-related injury. There is no question that he has paid those charges in full. The codes show that treatment was for services allowed by the DOL. The only problem is that this info is not on that one single form.

No, I was not able to get the paperwork mailed on Wednesday. Now it is going to be Monday. I have Mabel plans on Thursday, and since Friday is Christmas Eve, I don't think any mail will be going out until Monday anyway.

The Pony is adding a paragraph to his cover letter to explain the situation.

He has used a rare day off to try to get this form. It took two days, and was incomplete. He can't take off infinite days to keep going back until the form is correctly filled out. The doctor's office reaps no benefit from spending time on a situation in which they will receive no payment, nor a penalty. I think the most reasonable approach is to send the form as it is, with the accompanying paperwork from the office which shows the items that are lacking on the form.

The worst that can happen is that it will be returned with no reimbursement, and The Pony will have to use his time off he will take for moving into his house to TRY and get the form completed correctly. Again, I don't see why the doctor's office would take the time to do so. But it might come to that.