General Office Policy

Welcome to the Health and Healing Center!

We are dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of women and their loved ones. This document contains important policy information. Please read over the entire document, if you have any questions please feel free to call the Health and Healing Center.

Appointments

We consider an appointment to be an agreement between you and our office. This is a busy practice and the physician takes pride in helping each and every person as close to their scheduled time as possible.

  • We are responsible to be onsite and provide our services, or to inform you otherwise.
  • You are responsible for keeping the appointment and being on time or giving us a 24-business hours notice of cancellation.

Should you decide not to keep the appointment without giving the appropriate notice, you will be charged an $85.00 cancellation fee. In order to enforce this we will be asking you for a credit card to hold your appointment. Your credit card will not be charged unless you miss your appointment without at least a 24-business hour cancellation.

Payment

The Health and Healing Center requires payment in full at the time services are rendered.

For your convenience we accept cash, Visa, Discover or MasterCard payments.
Health Savings Accounts (HSAs): You can use HSA funds to pay for the services provided by the Health and Healing Center. We can process HSA debit cards.

Medical Flexible Spending Plans: You can use Flex funds to pay for services provided by Health and Healing Center. We are happy to provide duplicate receipts for your convenience, if needed. Just ask when you check out.

Insurance

We will provide you with the codes for you to submit your claim to your insurance company. Your insurance company will then reimburse you whatever amount they allow for services provided by an “out of network” physician. In order to keep our fees as low as possible, we do not employ staff for the purpose of billing insurance or processing paper work of any kind related to insurance companies for the purpose of reimbursement for the fees incurred at the Women’s Health and Healing Center. Please note that not all health insurance policies include coverage for services provided by naturopathic physicians.

If your health insurance plan has an individual and/or family out-of-pocket deductible, the fees you pay the Health and Healing Center for services should count towards these deductibles with submittal of the receipt provided by us. It’s always a good idea to verify that your particular insurance plan accepts services provided by naturopathic physicians. Medicare does not cover naturopathic medical doctors.

The doctors at the center are not recognized providers for any insurance company and the Health and Healing Center does not submit claims to insurance companies. See below for explanation.

Emergencies

If you have a true medical emergency or serious medical concern you are to call 911 immediately. If you have an urgent medical concern please call the office; if it is after regular business hours (9am to 5pm) please leave a message for Dr. Hamilton and she will return you call the next business day, if you feel you can not wait until the next business day it is your responsibility to seek the appropriate medical care.

Patient Decorum Policy

The Health and Healing Center reserves the right to terminate treatment for any violation of appropriate patient decorum. This may include, but is not limited to: violent, aggressive, or threatening behavior towards a member of our healing team or another patient; repeated dishonesty, lying, or misleading information being presented as truth, failure to regularly follow the directions and recommendations of our healing team, repeated late cancellation or no shows, failure to pay balance in full at time of visit, inappropriate sexual misconduct, spousal abuse, child abuse, arriving to our center intoxicated, or inappropriately soliciting team members or staff.

Financial Hardship Policy

We will make every effort to ensure continuity of care by creating payment arrangements for every established patient who encounters financial hardship, particularly in the case of children.

Children of Divorced Parents Policy

When a child of divorced parents is seen in our center or a parent consults with one of our physicians via telephone, payment will be expected from whichever parent schedules the child’s visit and accompanies the child to the visit. At no time will we bill ex-spouses or parents who are not present during the medical visit, unless they have previously authorized payment with our office in writing or verbally over the phone via credit card. If one parent has full custody (or there is another appointed guardian), please be aware that we will require authorization from said parent/guardian to treat and/or discuss the child’s case with the parent (family) who does not have custody rights during that time. Thank you for understanding our legal duty.

Why We Choose to Not Accept Insurance:

Many people question us as to why we do not bill insurance. We understand that a cash pay practice can be a financial challenge to many people. The doctors chose not to become an insurance provider because they do not want to be restricted by the contracts that insurance providers require their contracted doctors to sign. The contracts allow the insurance companies to determine which services the doctors can and cannot provide and contracted doctors tend to perform treatments and offer services that offer the highest reimbursement to their practice.

In order to collect from insurance companies, participating doctors must hire additional employees or contract with an outside source for coding and submission of claims and, more often than not, recoding and resubmission of claims since insurance companies deny coverage frequently.

Additionally, insurance companies are not focused on preventative care, but are heavily invested in the conventional model of health care that relies on drugs and surgery to address symptoms (disease management rather than healing) rather than treating the cause of disease.

The doctors at the Health and Healing Center use conventional treatment where it is indicated, she wants to have the option of using integrated health care treatments that can provide a gentler, less toxic, less invasive means to assist the body in its healing process. In an effort to avoid the inevitable side effects of prescription drugs, they predominately use naturopathic treatments, such as homeopathy, high dose nutritional supplementation, herbal remedies, acupuncture, physical medicine and prolotherapy/PRP to address dis-ease (intentional hyphen) and pain.

Specialty labs that insurance companies do not cover are also recommended. Please note that many insurance companies do cover conventional labs ordered by naturopathic doctors and we make every effort to utilize these when possible.

One of the principles of naturopathic medicine, docere (doctor as teacher), states the naturopathic physician’s major role is to educate, empower, and motivate patients to take responsibility for their own health. Insurance companies do not pay for educating patients because their fee schedule is set up to react to disease by treating symptoms. This is why Dr. Hamilton founded Choose Vibrant Living in order to provide valid health education via office visits, classroom-style seminars and webinars to the community, care givers and medical practitioners to reduce the risk and incidence of chronic disease, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease and cancer. Choose Vibrant Living fills the gap of preventative education and puts the “care” back into the health care system on the local and national level.

The doctors at the center make every effort to keep the cost of her treatments affordable. Please keep in mind they have the same overhead that conventional doctors have. The cost of malpractice insurance, staff salaries, extensive continuing education and supplies continues to escalate. Conventional doctors manage their practices by seeing more patients, which amounts to a 5-10 minute office visit.

We see patients for a minimum of 1-1/2 hours for the first visit and then spends additional time researching, studying and consulting to determine the cause of the symptoms before formulating a treatment plan to address and help eliminate the cause. We take the time to explain the treatment plan and suggests lifestyle changes that are conducive to healing.

This takes considerable time, but the advantage is that you get individualized care that attempts to support your body in its healing process instead of covering up symptoms with drugs that cause inevitable side effects. Our goal is to assist you in obtaining your highest state of health and vitality so that you can live your life feeling and looking fabulous!

Below are websites that provide information on the pricing of office visits and medical procedures for conventional medicine:

https://www.fairhealthconsumer.org/medical

http://www.healthcarebluebook.com

For individualized care by a highly trained, dedicated naturopathic medical doctor, call the Health and Healing Center at 928.515.2363. If you have any questions about our policies, prices and procedures, please don’t hesitate to contact us.