Medical bill sent to collections after provider has been sending claims to the wrong insurance

I’ll try to keep this as short as possible but I really don’t know what to do.

Last year July 17th, 2023, I was seen at the ER in South Florida. At that time I was on vacation out of state and my only insurance that I had was VA medicaid. I’m not really sure how out of state coverage works, but basically my whole hospital bill was covered except for this one service.

Sheridan Radiology has been trying to bill me $278 for a service that I received on that day. I’ve been going back and forth with them for MONTHS because they kept sending it to the wrong insurance (Anthem which was not active until August 1st, 2023) and it kept getting denied. They finally sent it to VA medicaid on February of this year. I did not hear anything back from them saying that I owed the bill and my balance due was $0 when I checked the billing website portal.

Well now today I received a call saying that they sent my bill to collections and I owe that amount. I immediately called medicaid and they told me that they did receive a claim but they denied due to it being out of network. I was never told that they don’t accept medicaid but also was never made aware of the denial. I called Sheridan and they tell me that they never even received the denial which is why they sent me to collections because the bill has been sitting there for months.

I’m not sure how these procedures work but are they really able to send you to collections for not “receiving a response” from the insurance and then not even notifying me as well? I called medicaid again and they assured me that they did send a denial on May 1st. Sheridan tells me that they will reach out to them to send the denial again. However, that bill has still been sent to collections. Collections tells me there’s nothing they can do and it’s my responsibility since it’s past 1 year of the date of service. They told me on their end they see VA medicaid denied a claim due to my insurance not being active during the date of service. I told them that’s completely wrong and they have been given inaccurate information because I DID have medicaid on July 17th. It makes no sense when Sheridan themselves are claiming they didn’t even receive a response from Medicaid.

The whole thing seems so shady but I want to make sure if this is a mistake on my end or something that should fall on me. I feel like I’m out of options right now.

(also I’d like to add, when I asked Sheridan Radiology if they accept medicaid they would not answer me. They were very dodgy which I thought was weird)