January 31, 2008

Miscellaneous

The bills are rolling in from my ACL reconstruction surgery. I’ve learned a couple things from my itemized hospital bill that I thought I’d share with you.

First, if you’re going to be in the hospital and will require constipation-inducing medications, do yourself a favor and pick up a bottle of your own Senokot to take with you to the hospital. If you don’t, you will be charged $3.24 per tablet. Considering you can get them for about 20 cents a piece, I consider this to be a serious rip off. I did not know that hospital Senokot is the equivalent of tablet-shaped gold. Who knew? I would have hoarded those little suckers and sold them on the black market had I known.

You also might want to bring your own ace bandages, should you require them post surgery. You can find them online for about $1. I was given a 4 inch ace bandage that cost $22.00 and a 6 inch ace bandage that cost $24.50. I must have been really out of it from the morphine because I did not think that I had ordered the diamond studded ace bandages.

Normal $1 per ace bandages would have been just fine with me. When you haven’t washed your hair for three days, and you have indentations on your butt from nurses forgetting that you’re still sitting on a bedpan, you’re not really concerned with having flashy and expensive bandages.

When I had those bandages removed by my PT, I told him he could get rid of them. I should have kept them and auctioned them on ebay or something. I had no idea they were so valuable.

I’ve also decided that I’m going to become my own insurance company, as in, I’m going to tell people what I’m willing to pay and what I’m not. I think I’m going to call the hospital and tell them they charged me over the allowable limit for ace bandages and Senokot. I’m also going to tell them that they’re going to need to do a better job itemizing out this:

O.R. Misc Supplies: $735.00
O.R. Misc Supplies: $154.50
O.R. Misc Supplies: $126.70

You’re not seeing double or triple. These are actual charges. If they detail out Senokot tablets, then why can’t I know what constitutes these miscellaneous charges? With those amounts, what could they possibly be?