How treatment gets paid for

PAYING FOR TREATMENT

There are three ways people pay for care here, and which one applies to you depends less on your neck than on how the problem started.

The three routes

Most people come in on their own health insurance. Some pay directly. And some are here because a collision or a job injured them, which changes the paperwork completely and changes nothing at all about the treatment.

• Your health insurance. We verify your benefits before the first appointment and tell you what your plan requires, including whether a specific procedure needs prior authorization.
• Direct payment. Some people prefer to keep a claim out of it, or have a plan that will not cover interventional care. Ask and you will get a straight answer about what is involved.
• An open injury case. If a collision or a work injury caused this, treatment can proceed against the case rather than out of your pocket at the time. See after a collision and injured at work.

An approval is not a promise of payment

Where your plan requires prior authorization, we pursue it. What an approval does not do is guarantee the claim is paid. Insurers say so in their own documents: payment still turns on your eligibility on the date of service, the benefits you have left, and the plan’s own review after the claim is submitted.

So ask the question that actually protects you — what your responsibility would be if an authorized service is later denied — and get the answer before the service rather than after it. A practice that lets you believe an approval settles the matter has not done you a favor.

Why there are no prices on this website

What a course of care costs depends on what turns out to be indicated, and that is not known until someone has examined you. A figure published in advance would be a price for a plan nobody has made yet.

What you will get instead is a description of what is proposed and what it involves before anything is scheduled. Call and ask about your own situation and the conversation will be specific rather than hypothetical.

The part people underestimate

The expensive version of a neck problem is rarely the treatment. It is the year of imaging, therapy visits, medication and time away from work that accumulates while nobody has identified which structure is generating the pain. A diagnostic block costs something. Twelve months of treating the wrong target costs considerably more, and it is paid in installments that never appear on one statement.

That is the case for getting the diagnosis right early rather than cheaply, and it is why the first visit is an evaluation and not a procedure.

Common questions

Do you bill my insurance?

Yes, where the plan covers the care. Benefits are verified before you come so the position is known rather than discovered. What the first visit covers.

What if my plan denies a procedure?

You will be told before it is scheduled, along with what the alternatives are. A denial is a payer decision about what a plan funds, not a finding about whether the treatment works. Whether you are a candidate is a separate question and the more important one.

I have an attorney. Does that change the appointment?

It changes the paperwork and the reporting, not the examination. What we provide to counsel.

Can I be treated before the case settles?

Yes. That is what a lien and a letter of protection are for — they move when the bill is paid. How a medical lien works.