Recently our team over at CoPatient has had the opportunity to work with two extraordinary people who are each in the middle of an ongoing battle with cancer. In between visits to the oncologists, drug therapies, inpatient surgeries and time spent recovering from treatment, each has had to face a mountain of paperwork. These individuals were referred to us through www.copatient.com and asked our Medical Billing Advocates to help them sort through the paperwork. Both independently told us similar stories of how overwhelming all the bills, EOBs, insurance denials, coverage updates, coordination of benefits, and so on quickly became.
One stopped opening her mail and the other took the opposite approach, filing and organizing every piece of paper received.
We’ve spent the past month helping each person sort through all the resulting medical bills and related paperwork. So far we have analyzed every piece of paper in an attempt to figure out:
- How much was billed?
- How much was paid by the health insurance plan?
- How much is still owed to each provider?
- How much, if any, is due to errors or overcharges?
Before, even getting to the answers to these questions, we were shocked by the sheer volume of paper each person was sent, all the while trying to manage their recovery.
- One received over 350 pieces of paper over the course of one year.
- Another was sent over 130 pieces of paper in just the past six months.
I don’t know about you but I dread opening up bills – phone bills, credit card bills, cable bills – all result in a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Can you imagine getting a medical bill every single time you visit your mailbox? 350 pieces of paper literally translates into receiving bad news every time the USPS delivers your mail!
While we continue to sort through the avalanche of paper, we were lucky enough to learn about a great new financial tool for those individuals or family dealing with cancer. Standbuy is a crowdfunding platform specifically designed to ease the financial stress of cancer.
Standby was founded by Sashka Rothschild. In her own words, Sashka tells us why she spends her time building this unique tool for cancer patients. You can learn more at https://www.standbuy.us/
When I was 17, living in Santa Cruz, CA, my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. My life was immediately separated into two parts, before she was diagnosed and after. The goal of Standbuy is to provide a focused, supportive and easy to use platform so that others might find a little more room in their day for healing instead of worrying about financial stress. We are deeply committed to doing everything we can to help you connect to your community and to make access to help easy and direct.
We share this information with you all simply as a potentially useful tool you should be aware of (in other words, we don’t have a financial stake in Standbuy or a financial benefit in working with Standbuy– we just think it’s a great idea). Our intention is to help those who are facing a tough medical situation be able to focus on their treatment and recovery rather than being distracted by their finances and paperwork!
