
Couldn't pay medical bill on last day of the month, cause eom reports lock it up - joshdance
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@joshdance&#x2F;medical-billing-systems-problems-and-collection-agency-fun-bd229399e4e1<p>Is this a common thing? Seems like they need to mirror or externalize their reporting system so they can still use it as they are running reports.<p>Relevant bit: 
&quot;I went to the website, confidently filled out a bunch more forms and hit pay. Error. ‘This practice does not accept home payments at this time.’<p>Which is funny because the clinic told me to pay online. So I called them back. Again.<p>Turns out, I had tried to pay on the last day of the month, in the middle of the day. And what do they do on the last day of the month in the middle of the day? They run their end of month report. Which takes about 3 hours and completely locks up their system. So I couldn’t pay online until that report finished.<p>I patiently waited 3 hours and tried again.&quot;
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db48x
Its probably pretty common. Its unlikely that anyone at the clinic has any
idea how the billing system works; the accounting department is just staffed
with accountants and has no engineers. The doctors and nurses and
receptionists know even less about it.

Fixing the problem might be even more trivial than mirroring the whole
database, but there's no way for anyone at the clinic to know that.

