I am giving Providence one star because I received...

I am giving Providence one star because I received good medical care there. But the overwhelmingly bad experiences of friends and family, along with the INSANE billing problems I have had with them, knock the other potential stars off.

In April of 2014, I had surgery at Providence Hospital. I was never informed (and if I was, the paperwork showing this is absent from my files) that the hospital will bill for services and then you will get a separate bill for anesthesia. I was in my 20s, had never been through anything more complicated than a root canal, and there was no way I could have known the bills would come separately. I also have no EOB for the anesthesia, just one from the hospital which I assumed covered everything.

I went back and forth initially for several months with Providence hospital, because they had billed me for the surgery when my EOBs stated there should be no charge. It turned out there was a mix up with my claim, and I was told it was all going to be fixed. Then I received a bill from Providence for over $8,000. Several more months of going back and forth and getting calls from the "high dollar department" wondering when I was going to pay my $8,000 "copay" and I finally got a call from Providence saying that my account was clear and I had a zero balance. Only 17 months after surgery!!!

Last week I got a call from a collections agency that Providence Anesthesia Group was sending me to a debt collector for a bill I never paid. I explained that I never got a bill, despite the fact that I lived at my residence for four months after surgery and THEN had my mail forwarded for a year after that. The debt collector was rude and refused to give me any information about who was billing me other than the name, they even said they didn't have the phone number for the anesthesia group (REALLY?!) and that the anesthesia group "didn't want to talk to me anyway" because I don't pay my bills. I finally got the number by calling Providence Hospital. The anesthesia group sent me an itemized bill and after a week of calling around I finally found out they had been billing the insurance incorrectly and my account appears to be stuck in a black hole. Meanwhile, I live under the threat that my credit, which I have worked VERY HARD to maintain, could be messed up by an $1,800 charge that I most certainly do not owe and have no control over.

My husband has had issues with their emergency room, where a dog bite was covered with a Band-Aid by an orderly (never washed out, and he never saw a doctor), yet he was billed for seeing a doctor. My sister was seen for shortness of breath and other issues and told she may just have a psychological condition and sent home (she is now being seen at Virginia Mason, where they are actually doing tests and monitoring). My brother was charged incorrectly for a trip to the emergency room. A friend's brother was said to be "faking it" after having a seizure, and was eventually diagnosed with encephalitis and meningitis, and spent a month in the ICU. I have more stories.

The only way you could convince me to go back to Providence is if I had no other option. And even t hen, I would go in armed with the knowledge that I absolutely can NOT trust their billing systems and will need to take it upon myself to tirelessly follow up and basically do their jobs for them until I know I don't owe insurance anything.

I know I sound like a crotchety old complainer. But I'm not. I'm just a person who doesn't have $10,000 to spend on fake bills, and I hope anybody who reads this knows to be very, very careful with this group.