Kelly Warford

Review of Western Missouri Medical Cente...

Where to start.... I went to WMMC ER for abdominal...

Where to start.... I went to WMMC ER for abdominal pain around 12:30am one night, after waiting 2 hours in an empty ER I was finally taken back to have a CT scan done, which I then had to wait another 2 hours to get the results of. Prior to getting the results, a Dr. came in letting me know that they were going to be discharging me shortly as the CT scan did not show anything. 30 minutes later I was being moved into a patient room to have surgery later that morning for a procedure that could have been life threatening if left undone. The general surgery Dr. was phenomenal, but when it came to billing this place is a disaster. As a full time college student I received an original bill of $22,000 as they had billed me for inpatient services and other items that I had not received during my outpatient procedure at WMMC. I went into financial aid the month I received my first bill to discuss payment, and this is when they discovered the errors. I was planning to set up payment plans and to apply for financial assistance as there was no way I, as a full time student, could pay a medical bill that large. Before I could make any payments on the account they had to correct all billing charges, re-send it to insurance and I was instructed to come in a month later to get everything set up...a month later I returned and was denied financial assistance due to having insurance (even though I was still left with a $7,000 bill) and was expected to pay $350 a month. We finally were told that they would accept $50 a month and paid this amount monthly and we were never told that this woud have to change.....fast forward TWO years, we made a call to the financial aid office, with the help of a friend who has medical billing experience, hoping to get something figured out and to get it paid off. We asked to be transferred to someone who could help us with this and had to leave a message, and unsurprisingly, we never received a call back. 3 months later we received a statement that we had an outstanding balance and notification that we would be sent to collections. When calling the financial aid office again, we were told that the original payment plan should not have been accepted and that we should have been told we needed to pay the bill off in 3 years. I called and asked, with the help of my parents, if we could pay a set amount to settle all medical bills and they denied our request. DO NOT GO HERE IF YOU DO NOT HAVE GREAT INSURANCE THAT WILL COVER A MAJORITY OF YOUR MEDICAL BILLS or have the ability to make substantial payments for the balance owed. You will NOT get any kind of financial assistance, even as a full time student. I would have gone to St. Luke's East in Lee's Summit had I known they had no desire to work with individuals who have limited finances, especially for procedures that are emergent. After talking with individuals who have had similar experiences at hospitals such as St. Luke's and North Kansas City, they were NEVER denied financial assistance for having insurance.