Health Company Seeks to Improve Medical Billing Transparency

Patients with large medical bills can easily be overwhelmed by how much they will be paying, by billing codes, and other medical language that may not be common knowledge for most people.

Athos Health has committed to fixing this process for patients. Their main goal is to prevent patients from overpaying hospitals and healthcare providers for medical bill errors. By increasing the transparency behind these bills, it allows patients to save money, according to the company.

Athos Health advocates for patient financial needs to be prioritized over the need of the insurers and providers, according to their website. The company offers a “Personal Patient Advocate” available by phone to answer any questions about bills received.

They also allow customers to submit their bill information through an online portal. A healthcare advocate will call the customer within 24 hours to discuss the bill.

If an error is discovered, they will work with the provider to correct the bill. They will only charge customers 25% of the discrepancy. The company also reviews bills that were previously paid and obtain any necessary refunds.

Athos also has a Group Negotiation Program, which can reduce unpaid bills for a group of customers. They use a collective negotiation power to reduce the bills of multiple patients who owe money to the same health provider.

Increasing billing transparency can lead to reduced payments for customers, , according to the company, and could potentially cause hospitals to bill more carefully