Bridge Benefits medical insurance TPA

Bridge Benefits medical insurance TPA

This is a complaint about Bridge Benefits, a TPA for medical insurance based in Ohio. I had a very negative experience with them. I had them during the time I was pregnant and seeing a specialist often for a complication. They just could not get the insurance benefits right. I was always having to send a letter or email or make a phone call to correct a problem. Usual problems were: benefits calculated at an incorrect percentage (paid as out of network when they were really in network), claims simply ignored for long periods of time and I would end up with the bill.

Too many times I had to pull money out of retirement to pay a medical bill that should have been paid months earlier and then when it was finally paid I would have to get reimbursed by the medical provider. It went from bad to worse, the problems starting with bad math on their part and ending with me having to have human resources call them on nearly every claim just to get them to handle it. And it wasn't just one call I had to make. Seems like it took an average of three contacts to get action. I would get letters from my doctors' offices saying that it had been past sixty days since they filed a claim and they had not heard anything from Bridge Benefits and so the bill was now my responsibility. It was really like a frustrating full time job trying to stay on top of them and keep my paperwork together so that I could dispute their judgment.

I didn't always receive EOB's in a timely manner, and then when they would send one out, they would send old ones along with it. For example, today they sent me approximatly 10 EOBs. I'm not waiting for one and haven't been to the doctor in months and months so now I'll have to go through and see which they already sent (one has a date of service 1/2004 and I am writing this in 7/2005) and which are new. I hated seeing a doctor because I knew I would have to spend HOURS getting the billing resolved.

My husband and I decided to opt out of his company's benefits just to get rid of this TPA. I was willing to pay whatever needed to get insurance on our own because Bridge Benefits cost me so much time and frustration. In the end, my husband's company must have had other problems with them because after a year they switched to another TPA after just one year with Bridge Benefits.

Kristie

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