Insurance errors
You changed jobs and now every bill says 'other insurance'
Coordination of benefits problems are usually paperwork, and they are usually fixable in one phone call.
Coordination of benefits, or COB, is how insurers decide who pays first when you might have more than one plan. The problems show up as denials that mention other insurance, coordination of benefits, or a lapse in coverage.
They cluster around life changes: a new job, a lost job, a divorce, a birthday crossing an age threshold, or simply a new year and new plan letters.
How to fix it
- Tell the insurer you had no other coverage on that date of service, if that is true, and ask them to update their records. Get a reference number.
- Tell the provider in writing to resubmit to the correct plan only, and ask for the new claim number and the date it was sent.
- Ask the ordering doctor's office to contact the provider too, if the bill is for a lab or imaging.
- Follow up. A resubmission with no claim number may never have happened.
In our case the insurer's records were right and the provider's were stale, which is the more common direction. But sometimes it is the reverse: the insurer thinks another plan was primary when it was not. Both are fixable once someone writes it down.
Do not guess at an insurance ID
In our case the correct plan ID came from the doctor's office that had ordered the tests, in a single email. That office had it on file and the patient did not.