An Explanation Of Our Financial Policy
We feel that we have a calling to provide you with the highest quality natural health care possible. We have prepared this information to answer questions you or your family members may have about our financial policies. If, after reading this, you still have questions, feel free to speak with our staff.
Why We Do Not Accept Insurance Assignment
We have chosen not to bill insurance directly for the following reasons:
When medical offices bill insurance companies directly, the doctors are required to become participating providers. The doctors are required to sign a contract that allows the insurance company to determine which services they will and will not provide, and how much they charge for those services. In general, insurance companies are not focused on preventive or wellness services. They are heavily invested in the conventional model of healthcare that too often relies on drugs and surgery. We are committed to the integrative medicine model that addresses the underlying causes of your symptoms with specific nutritional and lifestyle recommendations.
A participating provider must agree to accept the fees the insurance company establishes, regardless of whether the fees are reasonable. These fees often cover the cost of the briefest care. Physicians who are providers are required to accept discounted fees for their services. The medical office must write off the difference, often as much as fifty percent or more or the doctor’s fee for service. As you may be aware, the actual cost for doctors to provide services continues to rise, while the percentage of reasonable fees that insurance covers is declining.
Most doctors and clinics cope with the requirements of being participating providers by keeping their office visits very brief, so they can see many patients within a certain time frame. When the clinic becomes unprofitable, it will need support from another institution. Due to this, most primary care medical clinics are not self-sustaining financially, and have had to merge with hospitals whose high-tech surgical and diagnostic procedures are priced to keep the clinic going.
Unfortunately, we have found that we cannot stay in the insurance networks and provide the time-intensive, well-researched, expert integrative medical care you will receive at Maxwell Integrative Medical Center.
Why We Charge For Follow-Up Consultations
We occasionally are asked about charges for follow-up consultations regarding lab results and exams, as well as for telephone consultations.
In follow-up visits, whether by phone or in the office, our doctor spends significant time discussing your results with you. For example, it is relatively simple to inform a patient that a study is negative for cancer or heart disease; but it is entirely different to discuss the results of more complex integrative evaluations and to recommend lifestyle and dietary strategies that may help prevent cancer and heart disease. Please understand that integrative and preventative medicine takes considerable training, time and expertise on the part of the doctor.
Why We Carry Nutritional Products And How We Price Them
We recommend targeted, individualized nutritional supplements as an adjunct to dietary and lifestyle modification. This approach is central to the well-researched and science-based practice of integrative medicine, which all of our professional staff have studied. We carry professional grade, therapeutic quality nutritional supplements as a service to our patients. We do not carry nutritional products that are of similar quality to those that are widely available over the counter. Our products are thoroughly researched and made in America, and we price them to cover our costs of providing them. We keep our mark-ups as low as possible.
