Kaiser says billing glitch to be fixed, affected only a few

May 03--A "relatively small number" of Northern California Kaiser Permanente members, including at least one in Vallejo, were mistakenly sent "courtesy" past due notices they should never have gotten, a health plan official said Friday.

Such notices have been discontinued until the system glitch that caused the problem is corrected, he said.

"Courtesy notices such as (the Vallejo woman) received are not bills and do not request payment," Kaiser spokesman Marc Brown said in an email.

The notice the Vallejo woman received contains a return envelope, like a bill, and says Kaiser must be contacted within 10 days "to prevent your delinquent balance from being assigned to a collection agency."

The notice says that "according to our records, $244 is PAST DUE."

It also includes a payment coupon that shows an amount due of $0.00.

Brown said he doubts anyone who may have erroneously been mailed such a notice, would have sent in the past due amount, but wasn't able to immediately verify if this is the case. It is also unclear how many of these notices went out or how much money the demands represent.

Such notices "are sent, when appropriate, to members with certain types of payment accounts, such as a personal or family payment account," he said. "When a change occurs and another party becomes responsible for the charges -- such as when responsibility for payment changes from an individual member to workers' compensation insurance -- the courtesy notice should be canceled."

The error that allowed this particular notice to be sent in error is being corrected, Brown said.

"We have investigated and found that this is an unusual type of error that is limited only to certain instances," he said. "We are working on correcting the problem and have suspended courtesy notices until the problem is solved. In addition we are briefing and re-training our customer service representatives accordingly."

Contact staff writer Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at (707) 553-6824 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at Rachelvth.

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