Word: duking
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...already cleared Duke to do Hunter's transplant, why move him at all? Because PHP's go-ahead was offered on its terms, which put a cap on the amount of money the insurer would pay Duke, no matter what the operation ended up costing. While neither side has been willing to reveal what those terms were, it's a good bet that the number was on the low end of what Duke was likely to spend; on average, Duke's bill for a liver transplant runs about...
...coma, his liver shot, his skin yellow to his toes. Retribution is in the air midmorning when Brown reaches Trotter, demanding to know why Hunter is not at UNC. Their conversation is "spirited," according to Trotter, "emotionally charged," according to PHP. O'Connor intervenes, working through Robbins in the Duke business office to calm the waters...
...Hunter, meanwhile, is desperate. Her attempts to reach Brown at PHP on Friday were thwarted, she says, by a full voice-mail queue. She wants her husband to stay at Duke under the care of Drs. Trotter and Tuttle, whom she trusts. When a woman at PHP she believes was Brown finally returned her call Tuesday afternoon on the pay phone near the surgery ward, her message to Kim was that PHP "had a deal" with Duke that if it hadn't transplanted Todd over the weekend, it would move him to unc. "It felt like they were trying...
While Hunter has a new liver, the question of who will pay for it lingers on. PHP insists that it told Duke it would pay. But pay what? "They made an offer," says Robbins. "But they never agreed to pay the hospital bill." PHP fires back that anyone in the business knows that if an insurer "authorizes" a procedure, it means the patient is no longer liable, the hospital will get paid--something. Complicating this particular case is the fact that URN, PHP's liver carrier, has been negotiating with Duke over a liver-capitation deal for months, and neither...
After exhorting him back to consciousness, the angel lifted him up out of his bed, Hunter excitedly tells visitors, and carried him right up through the roof of Duke North, out into the morning light, where his wife and sister and parents were waiting. They were laughing and crying together in the joy that he was back. "It's like being born all over again," says Hunter. Kim allows that they are members of Russell Memorial Presbyterian Church back in Greenville but that Todd hadn't been in a while. "I wasn't a churchgoer before...