Tyler Denea: Auditing Her Own Hospital Bill While Caring for a Newborn

For 29-year-old Tyler Denea in Texas, giving birth was supposed to be the beginning of a new chapter for her family. Instead, after her delivery, she found herself spending precious postpartum time trying to make sense of a hospital bill that included charges for care she never received.

When Tyler went into labor at the end of May, she and her husband went to the hospital. The only available entrance was through the emergency room, so they entered there before Tyler was immediately taken to labor and delivery. She labored for about 12 hours and remained in the hospital for another 13 to 14 hours so her daughter could receive her 24-hour lab work and the family could complete the discharge process. Tyler described the delivery as easy and said nothing significant happened during her stay.

Then the bill arrived.

Tyler was covered through her husband’s employer-sponsored insurance when she gave birth. The total bill was $19,000, and after insurance, Tyler was responsible for more than $1,100. She wanted to understand exactly what she was being charged for, so she requested an itemized statement of her hospital stay.

The statement included an approximately $2,000 emergency room charge, even though Tyler said she entered the ER because it was the only available entrance to the hospital. It also included a $750 charge for two arterial punctures that she said she did not receive.

Then she noticed something else: 80 charges for famotidine, also known as Pepcid. “It’s physically impossible for someone to get 80 doses of pretty much anything in that amount of time,” Tyler said.

Tyler contacted the hospital’s billing department to dispute the charges. The hospital agreed to conduct an audit and sent her the results about 14 days later. The hospital cleared the $750 charge for the two arterial punctures, but Tyler is still disputing the 80 medication charges and the approximately $2,000 emergency room charge. She is now waiting for the results of another audit.

The weeks after delivery were much more difficult. “My postpartum recovery has been god awful,” Tyler said. She faced a difficult recovery that took about nine weeks. Her newborn daughter also had colic. “We’re not getting any sleep,” she said.

Instead of being able to focus entirely on recovering and caring for her newborn, Tyler also had to navigate a complicated billing system. “You talk to seven automated voices before you get to an actual human being. It’s very frustrating,” she said.

Tyler believes hospitals and insurance companies should be more transparent about medical bills. She wants patients to receive itemized statements without having to request them. “Make it easier for people to get a hold of an itemized statement and for them to be able to see every single charge. We shouldn’t have to ask for it. It should just be sent to us,” she said. She also wants patients to have a clear way to challenge charges that appear inaccurate.

At a time when a new parent should be focused on recovering and caring for her baby, Tyler has instead had to spend hours navigating billing departments and disputing charges. For her, the experience comes down to a basic expectation: “You should be able to trust that the hospital documented what actually happened to you and they’re charging you correctly,” Tyler said.