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Welcome to Bay West Endocrinology Associates.
In order to offer you the most comprehensive care possible, we offer patient care as a team consisting of physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. We also provide many services on site, such as thyroid ultrasound, and thyroid biopsies, bone density studies, arterial doppler studies as well as a certified blood drawing laboratory, capable of performing many specialized endocrine tests.
Office Hours
Our office is open Monday-Thursday from 9am-4pm, and Friday 9am-3pm. We can be reached by phone Monday through Thursday from 9am-12pm and 1pm-4pm, and on Friday from 9am-12pm and 1pm-3pm. For medical emergencies after our usual business hours, the on-call physician can be reached by leaving a message on the emergency mailbox. This can be reached by calling our main office number, 410-828-7417, and following the directions for leaving an emergency message.
Prescription Refills
If you need prescription refills, please have your pharmacy call or fax us a request to 410-828-4695. If you use a mail order pharmacy you can contact your physicians assistant by phone about how to obtain your refills.
Bay West Endocrinology Associates will begin electronic prescribing with participating pharmacies in the summer of 2009
Privacy Policy:
All patients need to sign a HIPAA form with our practice. As of 7/1/09, all patient will need to have a copy of their drivers license on file.
Practice Billing and Financial Information:
Payment and Financial Policies
Our practice accepts most major insurance plans. We have recently teminated our affliation with United Healthcare and its network family. Please click on the NEWS section to the left for more information about this insurance. We recommend calling your insurance company to find out who participates in their network as of today.
Referrals
If a referral is required by your insurance company it is your responsibility to make certain that a referral has been received by the practice by the time of your visit. This is required for both initial visits and follow up visits. If a referral is not available at the time of your visit, you will be asked to sign a waiver, stating that you will be responsible for obtaining a referral and if one is not obtained, you will be personally responsible for any incurred charges. A patient who does not have a referral, and does not sign a waiver will need to reschedule their appointment. If you have a co-payment, this will be collected before your visit.
Late fees instead of Interest
There is a $25.00 late fee for all accounts not paid or arrangements made with 45 days of billing. The late fee will be assessed every 28 days the account remains unaddressed.
Cancellations
Due to the overwhelming number of patients our practice has and their needs to be seen on an urgent basis from time to time, we have the following policy in place for missed appointments. If you are unable to keep a scheduled appointment, 24 hour advanced cancellation notice must be given. Patients who miss an appointment, without advanced notice, will be charged $25.00 for a follow up visit and $100.00 for a new patient visit. This is not covered by insurance. This helps keep our schedules up to date and get patients in urgently when needed.
Form Fees (for non routine forms, such as disability, to insurance coverage investigations. We do not charge to fill out refills or for any form considered routine to patient care) Patients requiring forms to be completed will be charged a fee of $10.00 for up to 2 pages and $20.00 for 3 or more pages. This charge was reduced from $5.00 per page.
Copies of Medical Records
Copy and Release of Records
In compliance with HIPAA, we require a signed release to process any medical record request. We only release records that are related to the patients care with our office. If you gave us records from another office, by law we are not allowed to release them, as they do not belong to this practice. If you require a copy of your medical record we charge the rates established by The Maryland State Medical Society. The current rate for 2007 is a base fee of $20.52 plus $.68 per page. This helps cover the overhead associated with processing such requests.
Our office has a universal policy that patients with accounts that are past due for longer than 6 months and in excess of $50.00, will not be seen until the account has been settled.
Open Door Policy
We want our patients to feel comfortable and welcome in our practice. Any patient who has an unfavorable encounter in our office should feel free to contact the office manager, Shannon Lengal, at 410-828-7417 x114. We can not make things better if we dont know about problems or issues. Our goal is to provide care for our patients with a high expectation of customer service. We encourage you comments and calls if this does not happen.
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