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I never saw him. I rang the hospital to ask whether I should come in for a tetanus shot. The said they'd look it up and call me back. They rang back and said they couldn't find anything in my records there and Doctor couldn't find anything either, so come in and have one just in case. I went and the nurse gave me the shot and looked at my foot where I had stood on the nail.
Would've been there 10 mins tops. Definitely never saw the doctor.
If you saw the hospital and not the clinic then no, the clinic can not bill you. A healthcare provider has a right to ask for relevant medical history and there should never be a charge for that (different if you're asking for it). In this instance, only the hospital has the right to bill you (or Medicare).
Out of curiosity, was the Dr who put through the claim on duty at the hospital? Either in person or in an on-call manner?
You won't ever be asked to sign a medicare form in hospital - although I think you sign something on admission and they use that for everything. But hospital billing is different to a clinic.
In a clinic setting you should be asked to sign for it before you leave but if you don't (for whatever reason) they can sign it on your behalf (citing the reason). We did this often when the system crashed and we had to do retrospective claims.
Yes he was the on-call doctor however I thought hospital was seperate to surgery. He owns the practice and has other doctors that work for him and he also has the contract for the hospital as a seperate thing.
If he's billing medicare for it, shouldn't it be billed as attendance in hospital? Perhaps he was at the practice doing files when they rang him?
Are you sure it's not the charge from the hospital visit? If he was the doctor overseeing the case (even from a distance) then that might be the way the hospital is charging the visit?
Don't know it seems very confusing!