I'm really frustrated with Kerlan Jobe ortho and surgery center in Los Angeles, California. After two surgeries at the same facility (the second one after the surgeon said 'uh-oh' over lack of function that was supposed to be fixed), the company not only keeps sending wrong billing but forwarded that wrong bill to COLLECTIONS agencies. I've been trying to get it corrected for 3 months for a wrong bill that suddenly popped up from almost 3 years ago.
Kerlan Jobe has a very big problem. The company splits itself into 2 divisions or departments. It calls one the Surgery Center and the other the Orthopaedic Care. That means when there's a billing problem, there's two problems. I'm getting incorrect collection letters from a "Go Partners" in Missouri and now cell phone calls from a "Transworld Systems" which lists a telephone number of 866-869-4061. The entire bill was paid in cash before the surgery even took place. That's part of Kerlan Jobe's requirement of cash patients, which I would think is probably in place to avoid exact situations like this. It doesn't work for them. No matter how many times I call Kerlan Jobe ortho and the separate surgery center I get the runaround and statement that they show nothing at all is being due from me. That's great. But Kerlan Jobe apparently forwarded the wrong information to one or more collection agency at some point over the past couple years. The irony is I've only ever paid cash. There wasn't anything that could get mixed up as some partial payment from a separate source. When I told the Go Partners rep that the billing was in fact very wrong and that Kerlan Jobe had stated it was cleared, she was very rude even though Kerlan Jobe itself claims there is no bill due. The second irony is that I paid cash for an additional surgery that took place after the company made this billing screw-up.
The staff at Kerlan Jobe has been very nice but that does nothing for me or the billing problem the company created. No amount of phone calls or emails has fixed this problem the ortho and surgery center made. They kept claiming they were looking into it and forwarding things to supervisors. They even state to have just sent a letter to me that says records show no billing is due. Again that doesn't help. As of today I am now getting phone calls from another collection agency going by the name of Transworld Systems that states it works on behalf of the Kerlan Jobe orthopaedic division. I had clearly explained to the woman at Go Partners that it is impossible for a patient to even see an ortho center physician without paying for the appointment before entering. The company obviously made a screw up and billed for included appointments that followed surgery (patients receive treatment for the month or so following). The Go Partners employee informed that it is not impossible to see a doctor without paying and that she personally sees it all the time. I find that witnessing to be very odd based on the fact she's in Missouri and Kerlan Jobe is in California. This is a joke and Kerlan Jobe needs to do something about incorrectly billing patients and then sending them to collections to add insult to injury.