Patients report charges after giving up the plan’s password – 05/28/2023 – Health

Uncertainty about the tests requested, lack of information about the value of the procedures and delivery of the health plan password and login. The episodes were cited by different women, who today say they suffer charges after giving their data to clinics that would be in charge of asking for reimbursement for the procedures, which is illegal.

The clinics, in turn, claim that they carry out consultations and examinations in a transparent and detailed manner. In addition, they deny that they have requested reimbursements on behalf of customers, a practice that has become the target of Justice.

Financial analyst Éricka Toni, 41, says she feels worried since her 19-year-old daughter went to a clinic in the Moema region, south of São Paulo, looking for a consultation with a nutritionist.

In July of last year, the student went to iHealthy, on the recommendation of a friend, to be treated using her mother’s health insurance plan. There, according to her mother, she was instructed to sign a term giving the clinic the right to reimbursement from the health plan.

The site, also according to the analyst, requested reimbursement to the agreement with their data. Upon learning of the incident, she changed the plan’s account password, which denied the requests. Afterwards, she says she was charged BRL 4,000 for blood tests and another BRL 600 for the consultation.

“I had to pay for the consultation because they put my daughter in Serasa”, says Éricka. According to her, the daughter underwent tests even before undergoing a medical evaluation and received an indication of an inadequate diet. “The diet had gluten and my daughter is celiac [doença causada pela intolerância ao glúten].”

The daughter, she adds, had never gone alone to a doctor’s appointment and, at the time, did not suspect possible irregularities.

iHealthy has eight units in the state of São Paulo, one of which is in São Caetano do Sul. This one from the city of ABC motivated the complaint of another consumer, who preferred not to be identified.

The young woman says she went to the place in October last year, after seeing good reviews of the clinic on the internet. The assisted repayment offer, according to her, took place in a separate room, where she claims to have felt pressured to sign the credit assignment documents.

Suspicious, she decided to change the password to her health plan account. But she wasn’t fast enough to avoid trouble. The young woman claims that even today she is charged for the procedures.

A Sheet iHealthy says that “there is no assisted/smart reimbursement, as it is the patient who requests reimbursement from their application” and also that “patients pay for the procedures, most of the time”.

The company’s CEO, Rodolpho Paiva, says that, in some cases, patients are presented with the option of paying via loan, made in partnership with a bank correspondent, Healthban.

This loan, according to him, is used to pay off the clinic’s service, which is co-responsible for the transaction. The amount reimbursed by the agreement, adds Paiva, is used to pay the financial institution.

According to Helthban, opened in January this year, the relationship “with its partners is purely commercial”. The company also provides services to the Be Free clinic, located in Vila Leopoldina, west of São Paulo.

There, human resources analyst Carolina Magnabosco, 39, says she was seen in November 2022. Her goal was to implant the beauty chip, a hormonal device, placed under the skin through a small incision.

“When looking on the internet, I saw several things saying that it helps to lose weight and that it had several benefits. And there [na clínica] was fully covered by the agreement.” At the location, she says she was introduced to the credit assignment procedure. “They were going to receive the refund amount for me and then let me know so I could change the password [do app do plano de saúde]”.

Dissatisfied with the service, which would not have clarified her doubts about the chip’s side effects, she opened complaints on social networks and on the Reclame Aqui website. She also changed her health insurance app password.

According to her, the clinic got in touch to ask for the withdrawal of the complaints, through an agreement. Be Free did not ask for a refund on her behalf, but Carolina claims to fear future charges.

Bee Free says to the report “that it does not carry out assisted refunds” and added that “it only offers the possibility of refund assistance in case of a customer request due to specific bureaucracies”.

Vinicius Carrijo, managing partner of Be Free and Heathban, tells the report by telephone that he “always values ​​transparency”. Asked about the relationship between the two companies, he says that the contact between them is just commercial and that, despite being on the board of partners, he does not participate in the management of Healthban.