Many of our Durham personal injury clients were taken by ambulance (Durham EMS) to Durham Regional Hospital. Our Auto Accident Attorneys are always having difficulties obtaining all of our personal injury clients’ medical bills and medical records from the various Durham Regional Hospital medical providers, so I thought I would outline the various medical providers you need to contact and how you can go about obtaining your medical bills and medical records.
And remember, obtaining your medical bills and medical records is something that, if you are handling your own personal injury case, you should be doing for yourself. You do not want to sign a medical release authorization (i.e., a HIPAA Release) in favor of the insurance adjuster. The primary reason for this is because you want to be able to review your own medical bills and medical records before the insurance company sees them. Why? You need to make sure that the information in your record is accurate, and does not harm your case. There are some very minor items that can be included in those medical records that may be harmful, such as a recent record I received from a High Point hospital that said “60 year old patient presents for neck pain, overall in very poor health and appears much older than stated age…” That is not something that should be in your record, it is something that the insurance adjuster will note in your file, and it is something you should ask the hospital to take out (or, if they refuse, provide more detail (e.g., this client had lifelong heart problems which were unrelated to his injury). More major items that may need to be revised involve when there are just plain errors or typos, such as dates/times/etc., and especially statements that you made (oftentimes there will be a description of the automobile accident that appears to come from you, and is contradictory to what you told the insurance adjuster). So, obtain your own medical bills and medical records, review them to make sure they are accurate and not prejudicial to your case, and if you see anything you’d like changed, be sure to contact the provider and make a respectful request (and wait until you get a revised record before you submit your records to the insurance company).
Okay, on to who you should be contacting if you are injured in an auto accident and obtain medical treatment at Durham Regional Hospital.
To obtain your medical records, you only have to contact one business. You need to submit a written request to Durham Regional Hospital, Health Information Management, Release of Information, 3643 N. Roxboro Road, Durham, NC 27704. Wait about 2 weeks after you mail your request, and then call for a status update to (919) 620-4555.
For your medical records you are going to need to contact four different entities.
– For your hospital facility bill (primarily the bill for providing a venue and equipment for your treatment), you can fax your written request to Durham Regional Hospital Billing at (919) 620-1241. You can follow up by phone at (919) 620-4555 after 2 weeks.
– For your Physicians’ bill (to compensate the doctors who treated you), you can fax your written request to (919) 477-5474 and followup by phone at (919) 477-5345.
– For your Radiology bill (to compensate the individuals who assisted/interpreted xrays/MRIs/CTScans), you can fax your written request to Durham Radiology Associates Billing at (540) 776-6435, and follow up by phone to (866) 647-4532.
– Lastly, for your ambulance bill you can fax your written request to Durham County EMS at (919) 560-8286, and follow up by phone at (919) 560-8285.
So, to summarize, you need to contact the records department (who will have all of your records (including the physician, radiology, facility, etc.), and then you need to contact four billing departments (hospital, physician, radiology and ambulance). You should follow up by phone every 2 weeks after your request, and you should expect the whole process to take 4-6 weeks.
If you need any additional contact information, please email our Durham Accident Attorneys or Greensboro Accident Attorneys at personalinjury@kregerthacker.com, fill out our contact form on this page or give us a call at (888) 820-5885.