Missed appointments prevent you from receiving care, and prevent the doctor from seeing another patient in need of care during that time.
You will be charged $75 within 3 business days of your appointment, if you do not cancel before 24 hours (Excluding weekends or holidays) of your appointment. If an unpreventable situation arises, SavantCare may waive of reduce the amount.

Note: For an appointment booked within 24 hours, you’re automatically subjected to the above cancellation policy.

There are 4 key concepts:

Any medical services that is sold can be divided into 1 of 2 types:

• Out of network services
• Patient is responsible to pay 100% of fee
• In Network services
• Patient is responsible to pay
• Co-pay
• Co-Insurance
• If annual deductible has not been met:
• Any amount above co-pay and co-insurance
• Insurance company is responsible to pay
• If annual deductible has been met:
• Any amount above co-pay and co-insurance

What in the world is in-network vs out-of-network services?
For e.g. if medical services costs $300

Co-pay is usually a small fixed amount for e.g. $20.

John’s Mom always thinks there is something wrong with her and if she did not need to pay anything to go to the doctor she will go to the doctor every-time she sneezes.

Co-insurance is usually a small percentage of total cost like 15%

John’s Mom always thinks there is something wrong with her and out of 100 sneezes she stopped going to the doctor for 90 sneezes since she had to pay $20 but for the other 10 times she sneezed she went to the doctor and the doctor had to spend $10,000 examining her whole chest. So the insurance company said to John’s mom that you need to pay 15% of the total cost. So that out of 10 sneezes when the doctor said do you really want me to do your chest exam … John’s mom will decline 9 times and say let me wait for a week and see if it gets better.

John is very high money saver and a healthy person. He only wants insurance in case there is a catastrophe like a car accident and he wants to pay low insurance premium. So the insurance company will sell him a plan with a annual deductible of $10,000 so that John only uses the plan in case of a big catastrophe and does not use the plan for day to day sneezes and coughs.
By selling a plan of annual deductible of $10,000 Insurance company needs to charge $100 per month as premium.
By selling a plan of annual deductible of $1,000 Insurance company needs to charge$500 per month as premium.

Say John’s mom sneezes 100 times.

• Without co-pay she will go to doctor 100 times.
• With co-pay she will go to doctor 10 times
• With co-pay and without co-insurance a expensive procedure of complete chest exam will be done 10 times
• With co-pay and co-insurance a expensive procedure of complete chest exam will be done 1 time

If not there is no pre-existing business agreement between the insurance company and Savantcare then it is out-of-network services.
It is in-network services if following conditions are satisfied:

• There is a pre-existing business agreement between the insurance company and SavantCare.
• Fine print of the insurance contract between the patient and the insurance company does not rule out the services rendered.

That is a mystery even to us.
Some suggestions as you try to navigate the complex contract between you and your insurance company:

• Call their customer service and talk to them.
• Use the my-health portal to see the data returned by insurance company’s computer systems when we ask them for co-pay co-insurance annual deductible and covered services.

The charge is $150 for per appointment.

No. 99% of the time, there are no charges prior to the appointment. Exceptions are:

• Patients who have a history of late cancellations or no-shows will be charged prior to their appointment.
• Patients without insurance or paying out of pocket

Note: First time patients may see a pre-authorization (will show as pending, not charged) to verify the payment method is valid. This typically drops off within 3-5 business days.

• The reason for requesting this information is to “hold” the appointment time.
• If you do not come for the intake appointment and do not cancel within 3 business days of the intake appointment – then you will be charged the cancellation rate as mentioned here.
• Our clinic tries to provide access to mental health care to the community. Often, people will book first time appointments with our doctors and then will not show up, which forfeits the doctor’s precious time when they could be seeing another person in need. We have found that getting payment information to hold appointments improves our show rate, which maximizes our doctors’ time and overall increases the amount of care we can provide to the community.

An explanation of benefits (commonly referred to as an EOB form) is a statement sent by a health insurance company to covered individuals explaining what medical treatments and/or services were paid for on their behalf.

Sometimes insurance companies carve out plans to different categories like mental health, etc. It becomes impossible for us to check for every patient’s coverage and hence its important patients are solely responsible to check for coverage with their insurance company.

Here is an incident analysis from several identical cases we have seen:

You can find out what your copay will be for a visit by looking at what your health insurance card says for the copay for a specialist. If the copay is not listed on your card, you can call your insurance company and ask. Usually copays are around $30-$50 per visit.

The patient is responsible for paying the doctor’s hourly out of pocket rate for any time the doctor spends completing paperwork.
A doctor’s hourly rate is $500.

Administrative assistants manage most phone calls and help desk requests (HDR) with logistical concerns outside of session.
However, if a psychiatrist or therapist needs to make a phone call or reply to a HDR on a patient’s behalf (with a therapist, another doctor, a family member or with the patient themselves), the patient is responsible for paying the psychiatrist or therapist’s hourly out of pocket rate.