Roughly 1,900 patients received bills from University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington last month for procedures dating back to 2017, according to WCAX.
The bills were erroneously sent to the patients, who had already paid in full for their procedures.
"We're very sorry that they received a bill that goes back that far," Rick Vincent, senior vice president and CFO of UVM Medical Center, told WCAX. "That certainly wasn't our intent. Our intent was actually to get money into the hands of patients."
Due to an internal billing error between the hospital and health insurer MVP Health Care, which was discovered in 2017, many patients overpaid the hospital. After MVP fixed the issue, the hospital reprocessed claims based on MVP's data.
"We assumed that the only thing that we were actually doing was refunding patients," Mr. Vincent told WCAX.
About 2,700 patients did receive refunds. However, 1,900 received bills they were previously told were paid in full.
Mr. Vincent said patients will not have to pay the new bills. He advised patients to ignore the bills and to call the hospital's billing department with any questions.
Access the full WCAX article here.
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