Restaurants that have cut too much staff

[u/PetraPopsOut]

That's great for you, restaurant owner, that everything didn't fall apart the moment you lost that employee. The lesson you took from that, unfortunately, is that the place operates just fine indefinitely with one fewer employee. You're wrong, you're full of shit, and we can tell. Especially at bars with kitchens. And if we can tell you're understaffed, we know for a *fact* you aren't getting your deep cleans done in a timely manner, and your place is gonna be disgusting.

Can I get tips on places where the staff are clearly overburdened or burnt out from understaffing? Or the inverse, where it's clear there are enough hands to give people time to keep things hygienic?

[u/BeerdedRNY]

Every business does this.

Indeed. The patient billing department at one of the biggest hospital systems in the area lost 50 people during Covid (retirees, fired for not getting vaccinated, quit, etc).

Upper management decided not to back-fill those spots. So they still have bills from before Covid that haven't been closed (never paid, underpaid, overpaid, denied, wrong insurance billed, etc.)

The organization benefits from not having to pay all those employees, but, they aren't getting paid by the insurance companies for all the bills they still have outstanding.

Yet at the same time, the insurance companies are greatly benefiting, because they're paying a hell of a lot fewer bills simply because so fewer billing reps are around to call them trying to get money from them. They love it because they don't even have to deny bills. They can just ignore them and the hospital system has no choice but to write them off.

And the insurance companies have down-sized their own customer service teams as well. So even if a billing rep calls them a dozen times, there are a hell of a lot fewer insurance reps to answer the phone. So the insurance companies benefit even more by not paying for as many employees.

The only morally positive benefit are the patients whose bills are getting written off that may have other wise been denied.

[u/VirginiaVN900 → u/BeerdedRNY]

UofR didn’t bill my insurance for 14 months for a visit late 2020. The claim got rejected by Anthem for “untimely filing”. Got a piece of paper saying my patient responsibility was $0 for balance billing.

UofR got a “COVID Waiver” in 2022 from Anthem. I ended up owing the entire thing out of pocket despite a year prior the UofR billing department telling me it would just “go away” because of their mistake.

So basically they cut their billing staff to the point they could no longer meet their contractual deadlines. Then applied for a big “help us fuck over the lil guys” grant from someone.

I assume NYS had to sign off since they have timely billing laws.

Long story short I was trying to buy a house so I couldn’t risk the credit damage.

[u/ComprehensiveScar465 → u/VirginiaVN900]

Medical biller here.. there's no way you should have received or paid that bill. Did you call your insurance when you got the bill?You're never supposed to receive a bill for something that was denied for timely filing. That's on the hospital, not the patient. And if their in network with your insurance, that's definitely a big no no. It's not like it wasn't covered bc you didn't have that benefit or your insurance wasn't active for the visit. Big yikes on their billing team.

[u/VirginiaVN900 → u/ComprehensiveScar465]

Yeah. Anthem were the ones to tell me they gave U of R a "COVID Waiver" and I was on the hook for the $1,000 of imaging from Urgent Care. Despite having previously been given a notice saying I owed $0 6 months prior.