Business ProfileforFranciscan Alliance

My son needed 'emergency' appendectomy that Franciscan St. Anthony was unwilling to perform (FWIW, once he got to a real hospital it became less of an emergency. Took >12 hrs to get into the OR and they even posited that surgery was not completely necessary; call it what you will, that is NOT an emergency). Rather than simply letting my wife leave with him to go straight to a hospital that would perform the surgery; ER staff insisted that he absolutely needed an ambulance ride to ******* (for the record my wife did protest about the necessity of this ride). He gets strapped in and hooked to machines that beep for some reason ($2,500) and gets a rough, $39/mi ride to *******. The gross price of this ride was not surprising at $4,400. What was surprising is that the Hospital (which is an in-network provider) forced a $4,400 ride with a provider that is out-of-network. As a word of warning, 'no surprise billing' apparently doesn't apply to ambulance rides. I could possibly understand that if there was an actual emergency (heart attack, gunshot wound, car accident); this was none of those things. This is a hospital creating an emergency and forcing care on patients to a third party that is making big $ off the situation. I doubt that the fraud is so explicit that it's 'hey I will make people buy your service and you give me a cut'; nobody is that stupid. More like; 'hey, we will push good business to you so you can fleece people occasionally if you cut us breaks in other areas'. At best, this is another example of care providers taking advantage of people at the risk of ruining them financially. At worst, this is malpractice (non-defensible requirement of an emergency ambulance ride) plus fraud that altogether risks ruining patients financially. I am not adding billing info here as it contains highly sensitive information. There is enough info here for Franciscan to know exactly what is going on.