Misdiagnosis costing me over 20 thousand dollars

[Bear201518]

In Georgia. ER doctor diagnosed me as having a heart. I told them I was de-hydrated. They ordered a helicopter ambulance to transport me to another, though I told them my wife would drive me. Upon arrival, the hospital confirmed that I was not having a heart attack. My blood pressure was too low. Insurance paid on the helicopter but left me with a balance of over 20 thousand dollars. Is there anything I can do?

 

[Just Blue]

In Georgia. ER doctor diagnosed me as having a heart. I told them I was de-hydrated. They ordered a helicopter ambulance to transport me to another, though I told them my wife would drive me. Upon arrival, the hospital confirmed that I was not having a heart attack. My blood pressure was too low. Insurance paid on the helicopter but left me with a balance of over 20 thousand dollars. Is there anything I can do?

You were Dx with a heart? Really?


Edit and fix your opening post please...

 

[Bear201518]

Yes, sorry, I was diagnosed as having a heart attack.

 

[Gail in Georgia]

You know, you can decline medical care. In other words, you could have refused being transported to another medical facility. You didn't.

The good news is that the doctor didn't diagnose dehydration when you were, in fact, having a heart attack.

Gail

 

[Bear201518]

Yes, that makes sense. Thank you for your reply.

 

[OHRoadwarrior]

Medicine is a practice, not an exact science.

 

[xylene]

You need to contact a med-mal attorney, have your records reviewed and see if the standard of care was violated.

"what if you were having a heart attack?" or some variant of better safe than sorry... um this isn't an extra test, it it many tens of thousands of dollars of critical care resources utilized for seemingly no reason.


Mistaking dehydration for a heart attack is possibly a huge diagnostic error.

 

[justalayman]

Mistaking dehydration for a heart attack is possibly a huge diagnostic error.

Maybe Mr Bear should research cardiac insult ( or shock) and see that you can in fact die from dehydration. It can cause the heart to simply stop working or not pump adequate blood for the body to survive. It is in fact an emergency situation.

I suspect there were enough overlapping symptoms that the urgent transport was justified.


Of course Mrs Bear would probably be here asking if it was malpractice if the doctors released mr bear with instructions to report to this other hospital and he died on the way from cardiac shock.

I suspect there were enough symptoms that caused the doctors to believe mr bear was in fact having or would have a heart attack and that the urgency of using an air ambulance was justified. Mistakes do happen. As ohioroadwarrior stated; it's an art as much as a science.

 

[OHRoadwarrior]

The issue seems to be the dehydration was causing a drop in blood pressure and the doctor in charge was not a specialist confident he could manage the drop in blood pressure safely. Thus he was sent to a heart specialist, As the heart controls blood pressure, the specialist would have the knowledge to determine why it was dropping. would you have preferred the doctor not specializing, keep you on a monitor and keep jump starting you if you died?

 

[FarmerJ]

While you were in the ER did they do the enzyme test ? ( cant recall its exact name) its a test that tells them if in deed a certain chemical that is created during a heart attack is present ? Even very small hospitals have the ability to do this test.

 

[ecmst12]

You have insurance but there's a $20k balance? That's more than the annual out of pocket limit on most insurance policies. Are you sure the claim was paid correctly?

 

[cbg]

Agree that 20k is beyond the OOP limit for most policies, but if some or all of the care was out of network it's not totally outside the realm of possibility. There are usually separate OOP limits for in and out of network care and the OON limit is generally much higher. It also matters whether it is or is not a high deductible plan.

 

[ecmst12]

Emergency treatment should never be considered out of network.

 

[cbg]

No, but follow up care can be. And if the provider is not normally "in network" they are not obligated to take the insurance payment as full. So even if the insurance pays 100% of the in-network rate for the emergency services, that may not be the entire bill.

And, once again, we don't know what kind of plan this is or what deductibles or co-insurances might be in effect.

 

[LdiJ]

In Georgia. ER doctor diagnosed me as having a heart. I told them I was de-hydrated. They ordered a helicopter ambulance to transport me to another, though I told them my wife would drive me. Upon arrival, the hospital confirmed that I was not having a heart attack. My blood pressure was too low. Insurance paid on the helicopter but left me with a balance of over 20 thousand dollars. Is there anything I can do?

How far was the hospital you were at, to the hospital where they believed that you needed to be?