News Feed Discussions Grischkan review Reply To: Grischkan review

  • sskOH

    Member
    November 20, 2022 at 4:28 am

    Pricing is astronomical, lies about insurance, and his office workers are awful to interact with. He doesn’t post his prices on his website like other surgery centers for a reason.
    I was quoted anywhere from $2000 to $5000 for cash pay uniliteral mesh and non-mesh repairs with about a 50% increase for bilateral. Though they only post average prices, Boston Hernia Center is in network with my insurance unlike the others that do post price upfront so I’ll give them some slack.
    I paid over $9000 for the first surgery and over $8000 for the second, and that was after insurance. Had to pay $3250 up front for the first one, was not told this until after my consultation with Grischkan while I was scheduling the surgery. The consultation cost $350 and lasted under a minute, the rest of the time was spent filling out billing paperwork. The second was $2250 up front. The up front amount alone is enough for the entire surgery at other places. $4500 surgeon fee for each surgery which was not sent through insurance like I was told it would be. Remember, he does not train anyone or promote his technique so it isn’t like the thousands of extra dollars per surgery he receives is put to good use such as training other surgeons. They told me that although it is out network, they would still send everything to my insurance for me which was a lie. I paid over $11,000 to them in 2021 and somehow still never hit my $3000 deductible. I was a few hundred dollars off of being able to start writing medical bills off of my taxes, if they sent me the rest of the bills in a timely manner at least I would have been able to get a bigger tax refund.
    I waited until I thought I had the first surgery paid off until scheduling the second, one of the office ladies even told me I fully paid it off even after I told her I was expecting one more bill for the surgery center.
    9 months after my first surgery and when I was months out from thinking I had it all paid off, I unexpectedly received a bill for the surgery center, then another one a few months later. I waited until they were about to send it to collections to call them since they made me wait so long. I asked why I received it, I told her I already paid an astronomical amount compared to their competitors, they got me for two instead of one because of Grischkan’s oversight, I somehow never hit my relatively small deductible, she said I was paid up herself when I asked months prior, why did it take 9 months to receive a bill, she couldn’t tell me if it was for the first or second surgery. She said she would call me back the next day after looking into it. Of course they never called back and instead sent a letter stating they gave me a “discounted rate” and threatened to charge me an additional $20,000….yes $20,0000 on top of the $14,500 I already gave them, not counting the few hundred I paid the anesthesiologist group, if I didn’t give them another $1,500 or so for who knows what. I was done with them and just wanted to get it over with so I gave them the $1,500. Unfortunately they have more power than the customer. I wonder what the not “discounted” rate is.
    I still have no idea what they actually sent to my insurance and what they didn’t. The third party anesthesiologist was much faster with billing and was in network, I received their bill in under two months.
    I’ve seen some say that the office and billing problems aren’t a reflection of the surgeon, but it is in this case when judging by other reviews, billing and communication problems are frequent, and because Grischkan owns the clinic and surgery center he is in direct control on whether it is fixed or not. If he doesn’t care about the customer service aspect of his business then what makes you think he deeply cares about the quality of surgery?
    I think the reason he makes unsupported and ridiculous claims about his recurrence rate and recovery time is to try justify his price to potential customers.
    They knew they were lying from the get go, insurance requires the bill to be sent to them first so his office knows that the up front amount isn’t going through insurance. They refused to give me the information to file a claim myself.
    Sorry for the long winded review, but I wanted to say as much as I can about him considering he has very little reviews despite having performed the most surgeries. Surgeons with over 10,000 less surgeries performed have more reviews than him.