Policies & Procedures

General note to patients:

We work hard to keep our practice, your medical home, a place you can count on for excellent and compassionate health care. We are often asked how we are able to avoid double booking, spend so much time with our patients, maintain a superior staff, and practice in the style which we do. The answer is simple. We make careful choices as to what insurances we take, what services we include, and what services we charge for. Please understand that our policies help keep our business running smoothly so we can focus on the business of taking good care of you and your family.

Cancellations

If you are unable to keep your appointment, please call us 24 hours ahead of time so we can be of service to other patients. We reserve the right to charge $25 for no shows and cancellations without reasonable notice.

Prescriptions

In general our practitioners will give you refills at the time of writing the prescription to cover your medication needs until your next follow up appointment. If you are running low on your medication it is generally time for you to schedule your next follow up appointment. Complying with this policy allows us to give you the best quality health care. In the case of your needing a medication outside of a scheduled appointment, please call your pharmacy and they will fax us a request. Prescription refills are done only between 8 am and 3 pm Monday through Friday. A $5 charge will be assesed to your account for prescriptions filled outside of appointments, as doing this requires a significant amount of staff, time, and research. This charge will also apply when we are asked to replace lost scripts (ie; scripts given to you at the time of a recent appointment but inadvertantly not turned in or mailed in to your pharmacy). Please allow for a 24-48 hour turnaround on medication refills. No prescription refills will be done by on-call physicians.

Phone Consults

While in general we prefer to evaluate patients and discuss treatment options in our office, occasionally there are incidences where our nursing or medical staff will feel it is appropriate to give advice and treat simple problems over the phone. Phone consults are not billable to insurance companies and thus are subject to a small fee to help defer the costs related to having enough medical staff available so we can provide these services. Phone consult charges are $10 for a phone consult with our nurse or medical assistant done during office hours, $15 for an after hours phone call with the on call physician or nurse practitioner that is brief or does not require a new prescription to be called in, and $25 for an after hours phone call with our physician or nurse practitioner on call that does require a new prescription be called in. Phone calls to our office done within a week of a recent appointment regarding the same issue for which you were seen, or for point of clarification of issues discussed at a recent appointment are not subject to a phone consult charge.

Payment for Services

All co-pays and deductibles are expected to be paid at the time of service unless prior arrangements have been made. We accept many PPO insurance plans including PHCS, Cigna, Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, United, and others. If you are on an insurance plan in which we do not participate (i.e., “out-of-network”), then you will be expected to pay in full at time of service.

We are contracted with most PPO plans, but it is the patient’s responsibility to ensure that our office, Balcones Woods Family Medicine, is in-network with their particular insurance plan prior to an office visit. Insurance plans are constantly changing and we can not guarantee that we are in-network with your specific insurance plan. Ways to check on your benefits include: contacting your company’s human resources department, logging onto your insurance’s website, or contacting the customer phone number on the back of your insurance card.

We Care About our Practice

Your opinion matters to us. If you have constructive suggestions or feedback please feel free to put it in writing and leave it for Dr. Hausman-Cohen so we can continue to improve our services and practices or email Dr. Hausman-Cohen at dr.hausman-cohen@sbcglobal.net.

Lab Letters

You will receive a letter from us within 14 days regarding your lab results for labs ordered as part of annuals and follow up visits. If you have not received a letter after 14 days, please notify our office. For labs ordered as part of our "tickler" reminder system, you should schedule a follow up appointment to discuss labs and related issues and refill medications prior to having blood work drawn. We will generally have most lab work back within 2-7 days. We will not send you a letter discussing lab work that you are due to follow up on, but will wait and discuss the lab work with you in person at your follow up. If there is a serious abnormality that we feel you need to know about sooner than you are scheduled we will of course notify you.

Medicare

We are currently not accepting new Medicare patients, but will accept Medicare from established patients who become eligible and switch over.

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