If you pay a bill "under protest", does this allow for future legal action against the payee?

A medical firm failed to provide necessary patient care in a hospital. One of their physicians was to provide physical therapy, and after asking me 3 times how I was doing, he never followed up. I told him I had not received any therapy. I asked the nurses about physical therapy, and they told me each time that there were "no written orders". I was released anyway, and wheeled out to my car. I stool up to get in and collapsed. My legs were jelly. I was confined to my room for ten days, and feel that my muscles were atrophied, and after two months, I still have problems with strength and other complications from heavy steroids given to me IV st the hospital.

You can pay a bill without compromising your legal rights. Make sure you put in a letter why you're paying under protest and retain a copy of it for your records. Make a copy of the bill as well. You can also request a copy of your medical records for the time period you were hospitalized. You'll need the Physician Progress Notes and Physician Orders and, if you can recall the dates you asked the nurses about PT, the Nursing Notes for those dates. Because you asked about PT, one of your nurses should have phoned your doctor to bring this up and ask for a telephone order for a PT eval. I don't think you have grounds for a complaint about the steroids. I suspect they were for inflammation and were a neccessary part of your overall treatment.

Please be very careful about filing a lawsuit if that's what you have in mind. You will need to prove significant damage or loss of function and these could well be a result of what caused you to be hospitalized in the first place. Another thing I want you to think about is the whole "deep pockets" thing. When enough people sue a hospital and win, the hospital shuts down and everyone's out of a job and people like you may have to travel a lot further for a higher level health care.

Only if you have a written copy of the 'Under protest Letter".
Everything must be documented for later on.

this is a legal question, not medical. please address this issue in legal area.

TweetyBird said it all.

Tags

　　IV Nursing 　　IV Injection 　　IV Infusion 　　IV Needles 　　IV Drip 　　IV Antibiotics 　　IV Therapy

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