Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?

– A doctor makes patients pay in full even if they have insurance, leaving the patient to file all the claim forms afterwards.

– A routine claim gets rejected for an illogical reason, but instead of resubmitting it with an appropriate note, the doctor just sends an invoice to the patient.

– An insurance company receives a claim with an old policy number on it, but instead of just using the new policy number associated with that patient, they reject the claim entirely.

I’m not trying to blame doctors here, since they’re usually as much a victim as the patients are. Nor am I claiming that the US healthcare system is anything but a total train wreck. But with all that said, individual people can make a big difference by just using common sense in the situations I described above. Nobody wins when invoices and claims and documents have to go back and forth a half dozen times for routine things. By taking an extra few minutes to address these simple problems when they first arise, the people pushing paper through the system can at least make things easier for the patients they are supposed to be serving.