Is it legal for a doctor at a hospital to do a UA with out your knowledge or permission?

Question

Went to the hospital for a bladdar infection and the doctor did a drug test without my permission or knowlage. All though it came back neg. When I recevied the bill cause the insurance deemed it an unneccessary charge, I ended up having to pay for it!

Answer 1

A UA is not necessarily a drug test. They use that test to determine if blood is in your urine. It is likely that you paid for something that the insurance should have paid. More often that not the hospital coded the test WRONG in submitting the insurance claim. Contact the hospital to have them resubmit under the proper coding. you may be able to get your money back. Stay vigilant.

Answer 2

Instead of paying for the test, you should have asked the doctor to provide the insurance company with an explanation as to the medical necessity of the test. If the doctor can not or will not do that, you could ask the doctor, or hospital to take the charge off of the bill because it was an unauthorized, unnecessarily proceedure.

There is often a legitimate explanation for such tests. If you ever saw the Rainmaker movie, you know that claim reps are trained to deny claims every time on the first submission.

If you feel that you have a case, you should seek the advice of a lawyer in your area.

Answer 3

You went to the hospital to see a doctor for a bladder infection. Right?
How do you think the doctor can assess your condition without a urine analysis.
He might have checked for drugs, but what he was really looking for was STD's.
Better talk to that insurance company, how do they expect the doctor to analyze a bladder infection without a UA.
Standard test to run when analyzing a bladder infection. Without a UA the doctor is just guessing as to the cause of the infection.

Answer 4

As a first year law student, my answer is unqualified. But your case would be difficult to pursue, because it could be argued that a bladdar infection could be caused by the use of some drugs. The doctor's insurance company would hire a lawyer to argue that fact. Your job would be to show that the relationship didn't exist. That would be more difficult. However, you might be able to stand your ground in arguing that he didn't inform you of the test before subjecting you to it. In that case, though, your damages would be the dollar amount of the test only. Unless you could argue some negligent infliction of emotional distress, it wouldn't be worth considering. Urinating or subjecting yourself to a blood sample probably aren't sufficiently outrageous behavior to warrent a claim of emotional distress.

Answer 5

Unless your job send you to the hospital then they can not run an ua test on you.