Beware of Medical Bills or How I "Saved" $50

"Save a copy of the medical bills you have paid," I often say. "And keep your insurance company's Explanation of Benefits that they send you". 

So I receive a bill for co-pays...a bill for $65.  My co-pays for this doctor were $10 per visit and recently went up to $15 each.  As I looked at all the dates of this bill, I had that feeling:  the "I know I paid most of these already" feeling. But, although I never actually throw away my medical bills, I might as well, for all the hope I had of finding them.

But we live in an electronic age.  So I went to my bank website and looked for that payment.  I don't even remember how I found it but I did.  I had paid it last September (before the last $15 charge), and they had deposited it.  So I called the doctor's office to tell them...and they gave me credit for it.  It was all that simple.  If it hadn't been that simple I would have mailed them a printed copy of the electronic picture of my check.  It would have still been simple.

I just wanted to share this to remind you. Medical office billing is not infallible.  They get busy. They have new people to train. They have turnover.  They change from one medical billing software to another.  There are any number of reasons why they could make a simple mistake.  So it's up to us to keep an eye on those bills.

And if you can't find the paperwork you thought you had, don't be too quick to panic.  Maybe you have a record of that transaction some other place, in some other form.  It's always worth a look.

   

Organization - Asking What's Working Well?

If you've been following my posts for awhile, then you may know that I've been battling this same problem for years now: the papers on the dining room table.

You see, we have an 8 person table, and usually 4-5 people eating, so I'm able to use one end for the mail. And it piles up, and around, and occasionally down...as paper clutter will do.

So yesterday a question popped into my head. "What is working well?"

So I made a list:

The supplies drawer of the file cabinet is great. Need a spiral book? Pretty computer paper for a letter? A composition book? There they are, all bought on sale.

I love my little three drawer plastic organizer unit, one drawer labeled "Write", the next "Calculate and Label", and the next, "Cut and Fasten". By using verbs, I was able to include a whole lot of stuff with only one or two-word labels. Eliminates questions such as, "Mom, where's the tape?"

The wall calendar has all the family appointments posted, and I use my purse calendar in conjunction with it.

My daily to-do lists are written in a simple 8 1/2 X 11 spiral notebook.

We can find local numbers in the Rolodex, and older contact information in the "Addresses Notebook"...a simple binder with notebook paper and typed sheets.

The shredder and the hole punch and scissors are all readily accessible, close to my place at the table.

My online bill paying is under control and on time.

With streamlined ease, I can plan meals, make a grocery list, and find recipes.

I use composition books to plan, to journal, or to keep track of information I glean while on a trip.

I'm able able to grab my Neo (portable word processor), or one of my zipper binders, as I'm going out the door.

So, with all that working so well, what's the problem???

The mail! Bulletins from church. Fliers from the apartment management. Any papers that come into the house. Oh, don't worry. If you have ever sent me a card or letter, I joyously read it before it ever hit the table. But the rest? Not so good. I stack it to sort later. And later rarely comes. Sometimes it all ends up in a box because we're having company and we need another place or two at the table.

So what can I do?

Hmm, well, I have notebooks for medical bills and EOB's (explanation of benefits)...I just need to put the papers in there. I could put bulletins and flyers in my Household Notebook. I could make a thin notebook for bills that have to be paid by mail. Not all that much really needs to be changed...only two major things. I simply need a time and a place.

Perhaps I just need to pick a day of the week to process mail...and a place to stack or sort it in the meantime. I kept thinking I needed a desk with enough space to sit at it. No, I only need a desk or system for the mail, not for myself. I already love my place at the table, where I can look out the window...and I can bring one category of mail to my place at a time and process it.

This project suddenly appears do-able...all because I started with the question: What is working well?

How about you? Have you ever tackled a difficult project by asking what's already working well?

Keeping Papers - EOB's

If you don't have medical insurance, you may want to skip this post. If you do, I hope that unlike me (for years), you've figured out what to do with those notices you get from the insurance company, telling you what they paid, what they didn't pay, what you should owe your doctor...in other words, your "Explanation of Benefits" or "EOB". You never know when you may need them to figure out (or occasionally to question) a bill from a doctor, dentist, or hospital.

I hadn't figured out quite what to do with my EOB's. Never do I throw them away, but I don't know how long it might take me to find the right one if I need it. I kept trying to figure out how to file them. File folders or notebooks? Medical specialty? Or...?

Finally it occurred to me! Why not take an idea away with me from the medical billing office where I used to work. There, they put them in notebooks by date. Of course, they have a whole lot more than I will ever have for a family. So I decided, instead of date, I will use month. Besides annual and occasional visits to other doctors and dentists, we usually have someone going to the chiropractor every month so, for us, doing it by the month does not make too many sections.

I put the most current month in the front, and prepared a few months ahead. So it goes: Dec. 2011, Nov. 2011, Oct. 2011, Sept. 2011, etc., going back for about two years (so far). Of course, I recycle old notebook dividers as much as I can. Do the dividers all match? No. Do I care? Not at all. As long as they do the job, I'm good with it.

If you were fuzzy about what to do with your EOB's, and think this might be an idea, you can, of course, have fun with it and adapt it to your own best filing methods. Notebook or file folders? Manila folders or hanging folders? Pretty notebooks? Colored folders? Monthly or quarterly? What works best for you in other areas of organization? Just do what's comfortable for you.

And if you have a backlog, don't let that discourage you. You can prepare the notebook and start with the next EOB you receive. And then go back through the older ones when you have a few minutes here and a few minutes there. That's my plan.

How do you do it? Do you have you EOB's organized? What method do you use?

Keeping Papers - The Joy of Notebooks

This morning I was reading through my blog and came across a post in which I promised to share with you more about my organizational system for papers. Me?? I who have papers growing out of my carpet like toadstools? Okay, that was an exaggeration, and leads me a bit off-topic. Yes, when we lived in Kentucky, after our basement carpet flooded, toadstools grew. And not to worry, we tore out the carpet and replaced it with tile...after putting in a sump pump. But I digress.

How is it that I can have boxes and stacks of unsorted papers, and yet tell you how to be organized? For one thing, if I can do it, you can do it. And even thought you might already be doing it better than I am, there might be some little tidbit here that will inspire you with an idea of how to tweak what you've got.

In my previous post on Keeping Papers, I talked about keeping a portable file box with each family member's most important records, eg. birth, baptism, immunizations, diplomas.

My second line of attack is notebooks (also sometimes called binders; in other words, I am NOT talking about spiral notebooks here, but the kind you put papers in and take papers out...and hopefully put them back in again!).

Many years ago I began a "Household Notebook" when I read about the concept at Organized Home.Com. Since then, my notebook habit has grown to one notebook for each of several categories.

I have a notebook for Paying Bills (I call it something else in case anyone ever breaks into my home...although, really, if someone else wants to pay my bills, they are welcome to). In this notebook, I have my bill-paying spreadsheet; my budget; my plan for paying off debt; and copies of the most recent payments (okay, more than the most recent, but that would be the ideal).

I have a Medical Notebook for important information (diagnoses, allergies, surgeries); fee tickets (receipts); and bills. When there's been some mis-communication somewhere and our insurance hasn't paid a bill - and I have to call them (again) - I can readily locate all the information I need. Do I have every single piece of information in this notebook that should be in it? Do you need to ask that question? (Remember my piles.) But again, I always figure that waiting for perfection does not get the job done, and I just do the best I can.

Another notebook I have is my Addresses Notebook. Perhaps this would be better served as a section of a Household Notebook instead of a whole notebook, or maybe this is where I should be putting the directions I print out instead of putting them in a loose file (and never finding them again). At any rate, using a notebook (or notebook section) for addresses is especially handy when you are involved in organizations that pass out sheets (or send Excel spreadsheets) of contact information, such as baseball, choir, or etc.

Family Recipes is another category of notebook, one which is bursting at the seams. After printing an e-book about freezer cooking, I made an Appliance Cooking notebook and put the e-book in there, adding my own crockpot recipes, and hints for using the rice cooker. (Oh, how I love my appliances.)

Of course, we have our notebooks for homeschooling, too, and I have a writing notebook or two or three. You can organize according to your own needs, hobbies, and passions.

Not all my papers are in notebooks. No, I'm not referring to the unsorted papers; I mean that I also have files in a file cabinet. But I have found that notebooks are the easiest to use for the papers I want to see at a glance - or "grab and go": go call, go copy, or go cook.

What do you need to set up a system of notebooks? Notebooks (yeah, I know you knew that), dividers, something to label the notebooks with, and a three-hole-punch (not all of these are expensive).

Do any of you use a notebook system? I'd love to hear your ideas, as well as input from anyone who decides to try it.