Quote:
Originally Posted by RVRoadie
My wife has used Advanced Dermatology for several years. During her last checkup, they identified two Basal Cell spots that required attention. One co-pay for diagnosis.
They required separate appointment for each spot. Ok, not unreasonable.
However, each removal required two co-pays. One for the Mohs doc to cut it out, and one for another doc to stitch her up. In the past, one doc has done both, for one co-pay.
She called BCBS to see if this was kosher, and they could care less.
So, a total of 5 co-pays for her annual checkup.
Looking for a new dermatologist.
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Just when I thought I had seen everything in medicine, you come up with this!!!
They required separate appointment for each spot. Ok, not unreasonable.
Actually it is. No reason not to allot time to do both, other than the reimbursement for 2 single excisions is more under CPT coding than excising two. The first appointment for "diagnosis" is reasonable, they need to schedule procedures at certain times so they don't back the office up for hours
However, each removal required two co-pays. One for the Mohs doc to cut it out, and one for another doc to stitch her up. In the past, one doc has done both, for one co-pay.
So, this doc comes in, I assume some sort of dermatological sub-specialist, removes the lesion and leaves it to someone else to close the skin? Can anyone spell "Prima Donna"? Cardiac surgeons do this routinely. They leave it to the assistant and residents to open the chest and harvest the graft, then they come in and sew in the graft or valve, then leave allowing the others to close. But this is because these are very long procedures and his time can be better spent helping other patients. (and they are Prima Donnas as well) But an office procedure of a few minutes!!!!
I would suggest the "stroke his ego" approach.---"Hey doc, you are obviously extremely good at what you do, my wife and I would appreciate your skill in closing the wound as well", plus it saves us a co-pay. If that doesn't work, I guess it is either eat the co-pay or find a new dermatologist.