If you are a Work Injury or IME patient – No payment is required at time of office visit

• If you are being seen as an authorized Work Injury patient or as an authorized IME, you will NOT be asked to pay anything. All your bills will be handled through your Worker’s Compensation Insurance Company or your attorney.

What is your payment if you have Medicare?

• If Medicare is your primary insurance, then we expect 20 percent of your “Medicare allowable charges” and any deductible required for the calendar year.

What is your payment if you have commercial (PPO or HMO) insurance?

• We will typically verify your insurance before you arrive at our office.
• If we are a “participating provider” for your insurance plan, then we will only collect the co-pay (either a set dollar amount or percentage).
• You may also be asked to pay any deductible that may not have been met for the calendar year.

What if we are NOT in your insurance network?

• If we are not in your insurance network, you may be asked to pay your bill in-full.
  Please discuss this with our office manager prior to your office visit.

What if you have NO insurance?

• If you are a NEW patient without a valid verifiable insurance, we will NOT be able to see you as a patient
• If you are an existing patient and have lost your insurance or we are no longer in your insurance network, then we expect full payment at the time of service.

Insurance Verification:

• We will verify your insurance PRIOR to your office visit.
• This verification will inform us of your insurance contract stipulations, including any co-pays you are required to pay.

WHEN to Pay:

• We expect payment at the time of service.

TYPE of Payment:

• Our office prefers cash or credit card (MC, Visa, Discover, and Amex).
• You may also pay On-Line thru this web site. We offer a Secure Payment process, powered by Pay-Pal.
• Due to the high number of “bounced checks”, we do NOT accept checks as a form of payment.

• We will ONLY file Primary Insurance claims.
• If your insurance company is setup for electronic filing, we will file this claim electronically through our computer system.

• Typically, we file your claim within 7 days after the office visit.
  • NOTE: Although we may file your claim, it is quite common for insurance companies to “lose” and “not process” the claims. They commonly state that they did “not receive” our claims.
• Hence, it can sometimes take a few months for your claim to be processed properly.
• If we have not received payment within 45 days, we will re-file your claim.

• Although we file all Primary insurance claims, we generally do NOT file Secondary insurance claims.
• Some insurance companies will transfer your claim automatically to the Secondary carrier, in which case it will get processed without any further intervention.
• Else, you will be required to submit the claim to your Secondary carrier after you receive the EOB (Explanation of Benefits) from your Primary insurance company.

• Our office will only refill those medications we have prescribed, AND only if you are an active patient in our practice.

• During your office visit, we will try to prescribe medications with enough refills to last you until your next office visit
• If you cancel your follow up appointment, we will NOT refill your medications until you are re-evaluated by Dr. Athni
• If you choose not to reschedule your appointment, you should consider obtaining all further refills thru your primary care physician

• We normally refill medications during the office visit
• We send all medication refills thru eRx (electronic prescribing system)
• Once we send an eRx prescription, an eRx is typically processed and filled within 1 hour by most pharmacies

• To minimize errors, we will NOT “call in” a refill medications
• If your pharmacy does not accept electronic prescriptions, we will give you a hand-written prescription during your office visit for you to hand-carry

• Many pain medications are “controlled” and monitored by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) to minimize fraud and abuse
• We will NOT prescribe or refill any controlled narcotic pain medications
• We WILL prescribe non-narcotic, controlled medications.
• These medications will ONLY prescribed and refilled during a face-to-face office visit