Patient First Sent A Collections Letter 26 days after I paid my bill. Glen Allen Virginia

As somebody who was the victim of the flawed Patient First billing/payment systems, I provided a detailed report on this website about the problems I experienced and I communicated these complaints directly to Dr. Sowers, the CEO of Patient First.  On October 16, 2014, in response to my detailed complaint, Dr. Sowers wrote in part, "Unfortunately, credit card payments currently are "batch" processed and posted the next business day.  We do have a project in the works that will allow real-time posting of credit card payments but this is a near-future enhancement."

What is most shocking about this admission by the CEO of Patient First, is that Virginia Code 18VAC85-20-26 requires Practitioners to properly manage patient records and maintain timely, accurate, legible and complete patient records.  Per the CEO's own admissions, if you make a credit card payment to Patient First over their automated system, the payment is not immediately posted onto your account so the employees at the field level do not have the ability to see that a payment has been made.  In my case, I was forced to double pay a bill, even through I provided the Patient First employees with a confirmation number documenting that a payment has been made.  The bottom line is that Patient First does not always maintain accurate information which has been acknowledged by Dr. Sowers. 

During my many contacts with Patient First employees from the ground floor, all the way up to the CEO of the company, I found a complete disconnect between the corporate executive level employees and the non-executive level employees.

I would suggest that you take your complaint directly to Dr. Sowers, the CEO of Patient First.  Although his written response to me included numerous fase assurances, at the very least he was responsive which is more than I can say for many of the people who work under him.  In the words of Patient First Privacy Officer, Steve McCoy, some of the Patient First employees as "Blind Fools."  Based on the problems I experienced, I suspect that some of these blind fools probably handled the accounting of the payment that you made.