Some students have received bills saying they owe extra from a lab company working with Campus Care.
A lab service, used by Campus Care, is repeatedly overcharging students for lab work, Ohio University officials say.
Students who have a university insurance plan, dubbed the WellBeing Plan, aren’t charged a fee for lab testing. But in the past year, about 20 students received a bill for their lab tests. It wasn’t immediately clear how many of those students are enrolled in the WellBeing Plan.
The bills, typically less than $20 each, were sent by LabCorp, the North Carolina-based company that handles OU’s lab testing.
The bills have an incorrect code, said Anna Wenning, the student insurance administrator, who talked with officials at LabCorp.
Wenning suspects that part of the problem might be a large staff turnover at LabCorp. Campus Care was assigned three different representatives to work with over about a year.
LabCorp did not respond to several calls and emails seeking comment.
Javad Anjum, a Ph. D. student from India, is one of the students receiving these erroneous charges. He has a chronic condition that requires him to have lab work every six months.
He is working with the Center for Student Legal Services to dispute four bills he’s received since 2013.
He knew he was incorrectly receiving the bills, but paid them anyway.
“Most of the international students, we don’t know better,” Anjum said. “We’re actually paying up each time we get the collections notices.”
Anjum said that he is most upset that LabCorp has not called or emailed to give him an apology, explanation or assurance that it won’t happen again. For that reason, he has decided not to go to his appointments.
“I haven’t gone to my labs even though they are overdue by two months,” he said.
Anjum’s girlfriend and Ph. D. student, Audra Hilterbran, has also had issues with bills.
“Throughout the years as a graduate student, I would receive bills from them, sometimes I wouldn’t,” Hilterbran said. “In the beginning I just paid them because I assumed that I owed them.”
The errors in billing are not confined to those in just one group. Wenning has heard reports of graduate, undergraduate, reduced credit hour, domestic and international students all having similar issues.
“We have investigated and have not found a common factor among the students,” Wenning said.
Because of HIPAA laws, Campus Care staff and Wenning cannot know any one claim has been processed incorrectly, since the student receives the bill directly from LabCorp.
When the insurance company receives the erroneous bill from LabCorp, it processes the claim according to the policy like it normally would, which may be against the deductible or coinsurance, Wenning said.
Campus Care staff and Wenning are working with LabCorp and the insurance company to try and fix the errors when students tell them they have occurred.
“We realize an error like this can be frustrating to students, and we sympathize with them,” she said.
Anjum said he is trying to bring the issue before the Graduate Student Senate on Feb. 23.
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