Our Fees
Office Visit Fees
The fee charged for a visit to the office depends on the services provided to you during that visit – which may be as limited as a 5 minute blood draw or as extensive as a 60 minute exam with a physician. Any labs, tests, treatments, and procedures provided during the visit will affect the total charge.
Routine Physical Exam Fees
Many insurance plans, including Medicare, do not fully reimburse for the cost of providing routine physical exams, although such exams are very important to your overall health at certain intervals in your life . . . if that occurs, the fees for the exam will be the responsibility of the recipient.
Inpatient Fees
When a doctor from Piedmont Internal Medicine provides you with a service while you are an inpatient in a hospital, rehabilitation center, or nursing home, fees will be assessed based on the time and complexity of the service provided.
Home Visit Fees
When a doctor from Piedmont Internal Medicine provides you with a service in your home, fees will be assessed based on the time and complexity of the service provided.
Third Party Physical Exam Fees
Insurance plans generally do not reimburse for physical exams requested by employers, schools, camps, scouts, athletic teams, disability agencies, life insurance companies, or other third parties . . . for those types of physical exams, the fees for the exam will be the responsibility of the recipient.
Lab Fees
Any lab specimens processed by Piedmont Internal Medicine will be billed for by the practice. However, some of the tests needed by your doctor may be sent to outside reference labs for processing. Such outside reference labs will bill separately for their services. In some cases, insurance companies dictate which reference labs we must use . . . in those cases, if you do not update us on your current insurance coverage, your specimens may end up at a non-covered lab, resulting in fees for which you will be liable. In cases where your insurance plan insists that a specimen be sent to a reference lab but you would like the test done in our lab for an immediate result, you have the option to sign a “STAT Waiver”, have the test done by our office, and pay for the test outside of insurance coverage.
Missed Appointment Fees
If you are unable to keep your appointment, please notify us as soon as possible so that other patients may be served in your time slot. You may be charged a special fee for missed appointments and for appointments canceled with less than 12 hours notice. Any such charges will be your responsibility, as insurance companies do not cover missed appointment fees.
Telephone Consult Fees
The doctors and staff at Piedmont Internal Medicine will gladly assist you by phone if that is the only means of addressing an urgent medical problem. If you have such a problem at a time when the office is closed, or if you are unable to make it to the office during business hours, you may request that your problem be addressed by phone. There may also be times when another provider consults our office by phone on your behalf (eg, during a visit you may have to the emergency room.) If your physician, or a covering physician, renders a service on your behalf based upon a phone request, you may be assessed a special fee for the time and resources involved. It is likely that any such fee will be your responsibility, as insurance companies do not typically cover phone consult fees.
Form Completion Fees
The doctors and staff at Piedmont Internal Medicine will gladly assist in the completion of forms requiring our input that you may need completed. If your physician, or a covering physician, spends time completing forms on your behalf, you may be assessed a special fee for the time and resources involved. It is likely that any such fee will be your responsibility, as insurance companies do not typically cover phone consult fees.
Faxing Fees
Our office will send and receive a modest number of fax documents on your behalf without charge whenever clinically necessary. However, clinically unnecessary and/or voluminous requests for faxing on your behalf may result in a special fee to cover the associated costs. It is likely that any such fee will be your responsibility, as insurance companies do not typically cover faxing fees.
Third Party Visit Fees
Occasionally, a patient’s family member or representative wants to schedule an office visit to discuss a patient without the patient being present: a “third party visit”. The doctors at Piedmont Internal Medicine will gladly meet with such a third party on behalf of the patient, but must have the permission of the patient or guardian to discuss clinical information and the fee for such a visit will be the responsibility of the third party, as the patient can not be charged if not seen.
Record Copying Fees (Click here to download the form to receive your medical records from us)
Piedmont Internal Medicine routinely copies limited records free of charge for patients and other providers involved in the care of our patients. However, when records are requested by insurance companies, attorneys, employers, courts, or patients leaving the practice, or when sections of records or entire records are being requested, fees are assessed to the requesting party to cover the costs associated with such copying – these fees are set by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Collection Fees
Unpaid balances can be costly to process, so the billing office at Piedmont Internal Medicine assesses special fees for late payments, returned checks, delinquent balances, collection agency fees, and other collection efforts, including monthly interest fees on overdue balances.
Telephone:
(540) 347-4200
(540) 341-7102 (fax)
