In 2018 Kaiser Health News and NPR teamed up to create “Bill of the Month,” a crowdsourced investigative series in which we dissect and explain medical bills you send us. We have received nearly 2,000 submissions of outrageous and confusing medical bills from across the country.

Each month we select one bill to thoroughly investigate, often resulting in the bill being resolved soon after the story is published. But what about the large number of Americans who receive surprise medical bills that reporters can’t examine?

Kaiser Health News gives you this user-friendly toolkit to help patients understand some of the ins and outs of medical billing, what to do if you receive a surprise medical bill and things to keep in mind before getting medical care. Here’s your go-to guide to decode medical bills.