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forgot:

You should file a Small Claims against all three:

All Med medical
Collection Agency
Your old Insurance company

It should only cost you about $25 to file the claim with the local court and about $25 to have the papers served with Notice to Appear.

In small claims, you cannot use an attorney (they can't either), so if they fail to send a representative to the court on scheduled court date, they automatically loose the case. Old small claims cases where limited to $5,000 may be higher in your state. If you win the case the judge will enter a judgment against the 3, so ask for high punitive damages ($3-4 thousand) up to the limits allowed by Small Claims.

Once you have that judgment you have to collect which may be the hard part, but the Collection agency would have to remove the ding from your credit or you can contact all the credit companies with a copy of the judgment and they will mark that claim as disputed.

Even though you no longer have that insurance they are still obligated to pay if the transaction took place during the time your policy was valid.

The difference is that NOW I know enough to handle matters myself. I told my doctor what machine I wanted, and he ordered it for me from Apria. Indeed it must be a regional thing as like I said Med One was terrible here in Salt Lake and Apria is wonderful, knowledgeble and willing to do as you request. My insurance gave the green light to whatever I and my doctor asked for. No biggie. Now that I know I am in control.....I'm taking the reigns and driving the bus thanks..........P.S. I am set up to get a new hose and filter every 30 days, with a new mask every 90 days. I like the mask I'm using so much I'll probably just get a new seal every 90 days and wait a bit longer for the whole assembly

Why not take the whole mask when available. The day may come when you are paying out of pocket, then you can buy seals (cheaper) to fit your collection of masks.

sleepylady wrote:rgarito you may even want to let your doctor know. Many DME's get referrals from them. You may also want to call the company up and ask who the manager is of that office. From there ask to speak to him and then basically let him know what happened, what's going to happen, and how it's going to affect his business. If this is a branch of a larger company, I would go to the head of this company and let em have it.

That's an excellent idea!!! I'll have to make a few phone calls! Actually, neither my doctor or the sleep lab referred me to them--I got them from my list of providers with my insurance. Hmmmm... I wonder if they have someone I could report it to?

rgarito wrote:

sleepylady wrote:rgarito you may even want to let your doctor know. Many DME's get referrals from them. You may also want to call the company up and ask who the manager is of that office. From there ask to speak to him and then basically let him know what happened, what's going to happen, and how it's going to affect his business. If this is a branch of a larger company, I would go to the head of this company and let em have it.

That's an excellent idea!!! I'll have to make a few phone calls! Actually, neither my doctor or the sleep lab referred me to them--I got them from my list of providers with my insurance. Hmmmm... I wonder if they have someone I could report it to?

ABSOLUTELY!!!

Den

Anonymous wrote:they sound as bad as Apria. If you have the old approval letter from insurance you say they faxed to you, then that is all you need.

File a small claims against the All Med company and the Collection Agency and take them BOTH to small claims and ask for complete damages (cost of machine, phone calls, faxes etc.) in addition to the complete cost of equipment, ask the court for punitive damages against the Insurance company for bad-faith handling of your claim.

Save all correspondence, letter of medical necessity etc. Now if your medical insurance is a national company, then you most likely should have used their suggested DME and not this all med company. You basically went "out of network" by using that local yocal DME.

The problem is once you are diagnosed, insurance kinda runs and hides on what exactly you are supposed to do (what equip company to call, what DME to use, etc., etc).

A patient should be able to go to the insurance company website, search for cpap and obtain step-by-step instructions from them on how to obtain the equipment so insurance covers it.

For the price we pay for medical insurance they should deliver that equipment to your door in a Limousine with champagne.

Actually, new my insurance company (BCBS) did nothing wrong in handling the claim. The problem was that they never RECEIVED the claim, because the DME never made any attempt to send it to my new insurance. Instead, they just sent it right to collections! (and never even sent me an invoice first!) Also, my old insurance was correct in denying the claim, because my contract with them had expired and the claims were for rental time AFTER the contract expired.

UPDATE: Today, the collections agency FINALLY got them to submit it to my new insurance. BUT, then, the collections agency wanted to charge me a $25.00 collections fee on top of the invoice amount!!!!!! I explained to them that collecting that fee "would not be in their best interest" given the circumstances. (alright, so, maybe I was not quite that polite about it). After all, THIS WOULD NOT HAVE WOUND UP IN COLLECTIONS AT ALL IF ALL MED JUST DID THEIR JOB! It seems that I was pretty convincing and they decided to waive the collections fee. Hmmm....

Also, I reported them to JCAHO (who does the accreditation of all medical companies, hospitals, etc). JCAHO replied back that they do not handle complaints about billing disputes, but I replied to their email and reminded them that this was ALSO a patient care issue, as they delayed my treatment for a long time and then delivered the wrong equipment. Being Sleep Apnea can be life-threatening (in fact, my OSA was listed as severe with a drop to 56% oxygen saturation during the sleep study), I suppose that means they created a potentially life-threatening situation by delaying my treatment, right?

And, I reported them to the Better Business Bureau, too.

Are there any other boards like CPAPTALK that anyone knows of that I could post this information to? It's starting to become "fun" to make sure everyone knows how bad All Med really is!

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CPAPopedia Keywords Contained In This Post (Click For Definition): CPAP, DME

"I also don't care for the machine they gave me, and since it's still on rental I asked to order the new Respironics RemStar Plus M portable as I travel for a living. They said....."no can do".....so I said " you're getting this machine back". They said "thats fine". So I contacted my doctor to order a new machine through Apria, who were super the other day when I asked to try some new masks. No problem and they are getting the new machine in quickly so I can return the other. So stay away from Med One..............they can stick their corporate attitude where the sun doesn't shine. "


so, you didn't like the machine you had, and wanted a new one. then the company is stuck with a used one. a company can't give a used machine to someone with insurance,,,,, would you take one of the M-series if it was used