Happy New Year!
Please take a moment to review the below policy changes that you can expect to see starting January 1, 2024.
CREDIT CARD ON FILE:
To streamline our billing and payment system and to provide a seamless, convenient way for patients to pay their bills, effective January 1, 2024, Coal Creek Family Medicine will require all patients keep an active credit card on file with our office. Your credit card information will be obtained and kept securely. For your protection, only the last 4 digits of your card will show in our system. We use a secure payment processor called InstaMed that is completely compliant, as required by law. Once your insurance has processed your claims, they should send an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) to both you and our office showing the amount of your total patient responsibility. You will typically receive the EOB before we do, so if you disagree with the patient responsibility balance owed, it is your responsibility to contact your insurance carrier immediately. When we receive the EOB, we will enter all pertinent information into our system. Our office will send you a statement showing what your total responsibility is. After 30 days, if the bill remains unpaid, we will bill your credit card for any balance of $250.00 or below and will be charged every 30 days until the balance is paid in full. Coal Creek Family Medicine will charge a $5/monthly late fee to all past due accounts without a credit card on file.
ANNUAL ADMINISTRATIVE FEE:
Coal Creek Family Medicine is committed to providing you with exceptional care. Many changes have taken place in the health care industry and amongst these changes is the rise in administrative costs of operating a medical practice. We want to continue to provide you with the highest quality medical care, but unfortunately, this requires providing services your insurance company will not cover. Over the past several years, we have absorbed the cost of these uncovered services; however, this has become unsustainable. After much consideration, Coal Creek Family Medicine finds it necessary to charge an Annual Administrative Fee (AAF) of $15.00 per patient. The AAF is intended to cover services such as after-hours communications, maintaining medical records, prior-authorization, completion of immunization records, third-party medical forms, insurance filings and applications, email correspondences, etc. Please note, your insurance company will not cover the annual administrative fee. All patients who are up to date with their AAF will allow our staff to provide consistent, efficient, timely patient correspondence, medical record maintenance, and completion of forms throughout the year. This fee will be charged to your credit card on file upon your first visit to the practice of each year. If you have any questions about our policy, please do not hesitate to contact our billing department at 720-439-6857.
ANNUAL WELLNESS VISITS:
Coal Creek Family Medicine would like to notify you of some upcoming changes that are taking place as of January 1st, 2024. Due to recommended insurance guidelines, your Complete Physical Exam will look a bit different moving forward. This visit will now be known as an Annual Wellness Visit. It will no longer include problem focused issues. We will then ask you to return for a chronic care management appointment at which time we will review your laboratory results and discuss your chronic conditions. Your annual wellness is intended to be a big picture examination of your health, your health history, and an assessment of what you may need for health screenings, risk management, vaccinations, and other preventive care. Annual Wellness Visits and Complete Physical Exams differ from the visits where our providers diagnose or treat specific problems. Attempting to focus on health maintenance while simultaneously trying to diagnose a specific problem often splits the provider’s focus. This makes it challenging to be thorough in completing both tasks. If you have specific medical issues or problems to address, we ask that you schedule a problem focused appointment. We understand it is often inconvenient to make separate appointments, but for this reason you are better served by your provider. Due to this reason and time constraints, we cannot address other issues during wellness appointments or chronic care management appointments. If you have any questions regarding the Annual Wellness Visit, please contact our office.
HIPPO HEALTH TELEHEALTH PORTAL:
Coal Creek Family Medicine is no longer utilizing HIPPO Health for Telehealth. We still offer Telehealth and are working on a new application, until then please call our office to schedule your Telehealth visit.
PATIENT PORTAL:
We currently are experiencing many technical issues with our patient portal and are actively working on getting these issues resolved. We know that it is not ideal, please be patient with us as we work through this. Please ONLY utilize the portal for non-urgent questions and communication and allow 3-5 business days for a response. Should you need something urgent that cannot wait 3-5 business days please contact our office.