Chiropractic Questions

Insurance and Chiropractic Care

May 24, 2022 Brant Hulsebus DC LCP CCWP FICA Season 4 Episode 19
Chiropractic Questions
Insurance and Chiropractic Care
Show Notes Transcript

Ask the Chiropractor- Does my insurance work with Chiropractic care?  Here at Hulsebus Rockford Chiropractic we answer that for how it works at our clinic.  Not all clinics handle insurance the same.  Call the clinic nearest you to see how they handle it.  #healthy815

www.rockforddc.com

- Hello, and welcome to another edition to"Ask the Chiropractor." A lot of times people have questions about chiropractic and don't know where to find answers. And a lot of times when you see local media, local TV coverage, they'll tell you before you go to a chiropractor, check with your family doctor first. And the reason I started this whole podcast is because I'm here to tell you that your local family doctor doesn't really understand chiropractic, never studied chiropractic, doesn't know much about it. So you don't want to ask them whether or not you should go to a chiropractor. You want to ask a chiropractor, whether or not you should go to a chiropractor. So, we start this podcast when you have questions about chiropractic, you can reach out to a chiropractor. And so I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus. I'm a chiropractor here at Rockford, Illinois. I'm a graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. And I also serve as the team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs. And I am the Illinois, originally Assembly of the International Chiropractic Association. So I'm coming at you today to answer a question. Now, probably the number one question we get asked has nothing to do with healthcare, nothing to do with, "Can you do this or can you do that?" The number one question you get asked, bar none, before any other question we get asked, is really simple. Do you take my insurance? Everybody wants to know, can we use my insurance? I have insurance. I pay for this insurance. I'd love to use it in your office. So the answer to this question is gonna be different from chiropractor to the chiropractor. Some chiropractors don't take any insurance at all. They only have a cash practice and they do not accept Medicare patients. That's how some people choose to practice. However, that's not how we practice. Here, we practice where we take insurance. We work with most of the insurance companies and we run your benefits for you. We do work with Medicare. We've been a Medicare clinic since day one. Little history on Medicare, back in day my grandfather, one of the chiropractors that fought heavily to make sure that there was chiropractic benefits. Suddenly when you went to the chiropractor, you could use your Medicare to make sure that Medicare was there for chiropractic. In the year 2000, my father went to Washington DC and testified in front of Congress defending the patient's right to access chiropractic care using Medicare. So he was able to solidify it on a capital congressional hearing in front of Congress to make sure that your Medicare would cover your chiropractic benefits. And I have served as a Medicare chairman of the International Chiropractic Association. So we know our Medicare laws inside and out fairly well. Better than the average chiropractor use. You can definitely use your Medicare here. There are some rules and this and that. We'll talk about when you come in, but we can definitely, definitely use your Medicare benefits here. We can assure you that. Now the other thing is, what about like other insurance companies? What about like, if I have Blue Cross Blue Shield here in Illinois, if you even have Aetna or Mercy Care, stuff like that? What about those insurance companies? Well, those, I can't give you a blanketed answer for all the insurance companies. I can just kind of tell you that we are very good at calling and finding out the best we can, your policy. I stress to your policy, because at the end of the day, it's your policy, not our policy. So it's always good for you to call and ask your people too. You know, you're the one paying, usually get your care started under your insurance. Now, as far as where your insurance plan lasts the whole time with the care, that becomes a different question because a lot of times it runs out because, you know, the best of my knowledge is that your insurance company has the best chiropractors in the world working for them. Because they're able to get rid of problems that no other regular chiropractor could get rid of that quickly.(laughing) Of course, I'm being a smart aleck, here. Because a lot of times somebody comes in with acute sciatica where they're hunched over, they're an agonizing pain and their leg is killing them with pain and aches. They can barely move, bend, or twist and their insurance company says"You can see them four times." Now we've been around since 1949 and there's been very few cases someone comes in with that much pain and they're able to get better four visits. I often tease that the colleges should hire these chiropractors to teach, because maybe we're all missing something. But no we do have insurance, and in the insurance laws, you can do so much. So when you come to my office, and again I can't talk about the guy in the corner's office, I can only talk about my office. When you come to my office, what we'll do is, we'll call your insurance, we'll figure out what you need. The doctor will come up with a care plan, tell you what the best estimated care that they believe you're gonna need and then we'll figure out what the insurance coverage and we figure out what the insurance doesn't cover. We sit down with you, have a one on one, and go over it all with you. Then you know your choices and your options of what you wanna do. So that's how we operate here. Now, there are some insurance companies we don't work with and that's because they just, there's just, there's just so much paperwork, and so many hoops they make you jump through. And at the end of the day they don't cover anything. So we're not in those networks. Otherwise, maybe their fees are just so outrageous, it's above and beyond what we charge. One time we had a insurance company had a copay of $85. Well, we don't charge $85 for a visit, so why we join an insurance company with an $85 copay? It's ridiculous. Plus they want all the records and all the information. It's just no reason to be a part of a network like that. So, we're in the insurance networks when the insurance networks make sense for us and for you. If you have a question about it again, the best thing to do is call our office, give us your insurance information. We'll call, we'll ask the questions we wanna call and ask them. We'll ask you to call too and verify it also because sometimes you call three different people. You get three different answers. So we do our best to figure it out. The good news is usually somebody else is already coming in here with a plan that you have and we can crosscheck it. Now, the other unfortunate thing today, in today's world like, you can't call anybody at Blue Cross Blue Shield. There's nobody to answers a telephone. It's all automated, computerized. It's good and bad because it gets rid of some of the human error, but it also gets rid of the human part where you can actually talk to somebody and converse. So, we use the best we can. So, does chiropractic care, cover insurance? Well, in my office we can get it so it covers most of your care. We can work with the insurance companies to figure it out. We let you know ahead of time so there's no surprises. As far as Medicare, Medicare covers chiropractic care very well, with a couple of little hoops you have to jump through but we'll explain those hoops to you before we start care, so there's no surprises or shocks and stuff like that. So, you can definitely come to the chiropractor. You can definitely come to this chiropractic care and coverage and use your insurance coverage. Now, if you don't have insurance, that's okay. We have a lot of patients without insurance. And so because we're, we don't cost like 300.. We don't charge a hundred dollars for a box of Kleenex, right? Like you go to the hospital and you have Kleenex it may cost you a hundred bucks. That's how we do these other chiropractic. So come on in and talk to us. We'll sit down with you, we'll figure out what's reasonable. We've been doing this since 1949. The reason we've been doing this is 1949 it's because we always put our patients first. We will figure things out. There's a solution to every problem. We'll sit down with you to come, we'll come up with the realistic ways and make it happen. So I hope it answered your question. So if I did great today, I hope to meet you. Hope you come on and see us. Again, every insurance plan's different. So it's hard for me to say this is about what Blue Cross does, this is what Aetna does. It's hard for me to do that because they're all very, very different plans. So give us a call, come on out and see us. Sit down with us. We'll go over it with you. Call ahead of time. Give us your insurance information and if you really have questions about what your insurance covers or doesn't cover, it's a lot easier if you have your insurance information before you come in, that way we have time to run it and check it and see what we know about it. When you come in with it, you have to be patient with us because we're calling the same number as you're calling. We're calling the same website you're calling. So I hope that answers your questions. Excuse me. If anything else, you just go ahead and call us, email us. Leave a comment below. Maybe next time, you'll be the topic of ask the chiropractor. Talk to you real soon. Bye bye.