Sometime last week I received my bill from the Center. It wasn't until yesterday, the 28th of December, that I went online to try to pay my bill, however. It turned out to be much more difficult than I imagined it would be and it needed to be.
I could, of course, pay my bill to the Center in a variety of ways. I could pay it via snail mail by filling in all the relevant information the Center and its pay system, Instamed, a J.P. Morgan company, needed. I generally hesitate to mail in something with credit card information on it, however, given the potential dangers of doing so. Alternatively I could pay the bill the next time I went into the Center for treatment. That was not until December of 2026, however, and I am sure the paymasters at the Center wanted my bill paid long before this. Finally, I could pay the bill online.
At the top right section of the bill was a dark blue box with a statement which said I could "Pay and enrol in paperless billing" by going to the website listed below this direction. This box also contained an "enter code" which I assumed I had to enter to get into the pay system.
So I went to the website as specified. I had to put my email in, the code in, my last name in, and my zip code in. The enter code did not work (it was totally irrelevant to the transaction as it turns out making one wonder why it was there in the first place and why the bill said "enter code" before it). So I looked for another code and eventually found it on my bill. It was, however, in very small type, something all of us in the elderly category with old eyes greatly appreciate (sarcasm alert).
So, I put the 16 digit "NextGen Account # code into the box, a code that contained 10 zeros which made it incredibly easy to put in (sarcasm alert). It worked. However, this took me to a webpage that wanted my NexGen password.
Well I have two Next Gen passwords, one for the Albany Ear, Nose, and Throat centre and one for the Center for Rheumatology. I put the Rheum password in; no luck. Nett I put the ENT password in: again, no go. The webpage said I could change my password but I had no intention of doing that since both worked for their given portal pages and I had both saved into the password and autofill in my browsers.
There is so much that is wrong with this beyond both working passwords not working (foregrounding yet again the absurdity of life). First off, one wonders why the Center for Rheumatology simply doesn't use the pre-existing patient portal to collect payments just like the Albany ENT portal, the Albany Med portal, and the Trinity Health portal do. This would make the transaction easier and make it unnecessary to put in all the above information by hand (email, last name, code, password). Second, by not using the portal those of us who wanted to pay our bills had to put in a bunch of information (email, last name, code, password) that, again, would have been unnecessary if they simply used the patient portal to collect payments. I guess the Center's motto is why make it easy when you can make it difficult.
I was eventually able to pay my bill by clicking on the guest link, something I did not see the first two times I went into the Instamed's NextGen page. Given all the unnecessary trouble trying to pay the bill I went through, however, I decided not to use the services of the Center for Rheumatology again. If I need to see a rheumatologist in the future I will get a referral to Albany Med which, as I said, makes it easy to pay one's bills by paying them through the patient portal. All you have to do is go into your portal page and voila, easy pay. My motto, after all, is why make it hard when you can make it easy.
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