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Review 2/24/2011
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My adult child was a patient at the Pasadena Recovery Center (PRC) in September 2010. Before admitting, the PRC owner called to demand a $1,000 deposit in case insurance didn’t cover everything. I paid that using a credit card and my child went through their month long recovery program. We never received a bill from the PRC so in late November we checked my child’s medical insurance EOBs and realized that the insurance had paid 100% of the charges submitted by the PRC. That meant we had a $1,000 credit with the PRC. Thus began my journey to get my money back.
Between December 15, 2010 and February 16, 2011, I made 50 phone calls to the (PRC), that’s an average of more than one per business day. I left over 12 messages with the receptionist informing them that I was requesting a refund and to please have the person in charge of billing return my call. No calls were ever returned. On 30 other calls, the receptionist simply said that the Billing person was not available and that I should try later. I called as many as 5 times per day trying to speak with the billing person. On 5 other calls I was mysteriously disconnected after being on hold for as long as 37 minutes. I kept a log of the date, time, to whom I talked and the essence of the discussion. Only 4 times did I actually get to talk to the billing person. On two of those occasions, after identifying myself, she quickly stated she had an emergency going on and would call me right back. Why did she answer the phone in the midst of an emergency? She never called back.
Finally on December 21 I spoke with the billing person. She said she did not have the EOBs, so I had to fax my copy to her. She agreed that we were owed $1000 but that the Board would have to approve the refund. Again I made numerous calls because I never got the refund. On one call she let it slip that the owner was the one who needed to issue the check. Since he had called me back in September, I realized I had his cell phone number from my cell’s past history.
I then began calling him and after another 4 weeks I finally got my check on February 17, 2010.
Because of the my child’s medical condition , I doubt they would have had the focus and perseverance to ever get the refund. Indeed, I suppose that most of the Pasadena Recovery patients are in a similar “medical boat”.
I wondered if this could be a business strategy of the PRC, that is, erect barriers to patient inquiries hoping that the patient will just go away. I did a search on the Internet and came across two or three similar complaints from other PRC patients. I wonder how many more just gave up and didn’t bother to make a complaint to anyone.
As a certified member of the Pasadena Better Business Bureau, the Pasadena Recovery Center should certainly have better business processes in place to prevent this type of situation from occurring.
If this has happened to you file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau of Pasadena. Its quick and easy and it creates a record for others.
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