JACKSON -- — Sara Dornbrook, of Jackson, wanted two accounts in her husband's name merged. She didn't think that would be a problem. But she says she has been trying for about a year and a half to get her medical provider, Aurora, to do it and hasn't had any success, so she reached to Consumer Investigator, Kristin Byrne.
"This is getting out of control. I have no idea what to do. My business is shut down because of COVID, my husband is super sick," said Sara Dornbrook.
The salon owner is out of work, raising three kids. Her husband, Miles, needs a kidney transplant. He's in the hospital a lot. The family is used to costly medical bills in the thousands of dollars. So, last April when she got one for about $600, that seemed odd. She called her medical provider, Aurora.
"They accidentally created a second account. So, I was having two bills in Miles' name," Dornbrook explained.
Dornbrook showed the I-Team the two accounts. Dornbrook said Aurora agreed to fix it and she kept paying the bills on the first account.
"We're not asking to not pay the bill. We're just asking they put it where it should be," Dornbrook said.
She said months went by, and the bills kept coming from both accounts.
"So, this has gone on for close to 18 months except for this most recent one I got a bill from collections and it was for about $2,500," she said.
She was sent to collections. She says she called Aurora and found out why.
"She said that they tried to call Miles a month ago and because we failed to set up payment arrangements, it went to collections and there's no way to reverse it now," she continued.
And then Dornbrook learned something else.
"They deleted the account that already had payments set up on it," she said.
"You created this account by accident, and then you accidentally deleted the wrong account we were paying on," Dornrbook continued.
The I-Team emailed an Aurora spokesperson. It was the morning of Sept. 21. That afternoon, Dornbrook sent the I-Team a message on Facebook saying, "Miles just called...Aurora called him and they said they reversed everything!"
"I'm like, no way. Well, sure enough, they called Miles and they said we apologize -- this is our doing. We have reversed everything. The collections bill is now consolidated on a bill it was supposed to be on," Dornbrook told the I-Team.
"Within hours of you emailing them, everything was reversed," Dornbrook said.
Days later, an Aurora spokesperson emailed the I-Team the statement below:
While we cannot comment on the specifics of any patient's billing accounts, we encourage patients to inform us of any issues so our financial advocates can help navigate, address questions, and resolve concerns.
Dornbrook recently learned she is a kidney match for her husband Miles. To read more about her family's effort to fight for Miles, check out Facebookor donate to their GoFundMe.
