Medical Insurance
Chicago Dizziness and Hearing is a customer service organization.
We are mainly paid for our work through health
care insurance. We also see occasional patients who pay "out of pocket", or who have their
evaluations paid for as part of a legal or quasi-legal process (IMEs below).
In general, we "accept" any insurance. Our most common insurance provider is Blue Cross/Blue
Shield of Illinois. After this, it is Medicare. We ask "self-pay" patients as well as "telephone
consult" patients to pay at the time of service. Self-pay charges are set at the usual and customary
level for Chicago Illinois. We accept most credit cards.
If you have questions about our billing, please call us and ask for the billing
department, or email billing@dizzy-doctor.com
Managed care
We have contracts with some managed care companies through our contracting organization (NHC - Northwestern
Health Care). These are in general the same providers that are contracted by the community of doctors that
work at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and affiliated Institutions. The following is a list of providers
as of September 2008. Please check with your carrier to be sure.
PLAN
We are not contracted with Firsthealth, HFN, Humana HMO, and PPONEXT W/C.
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Independent medical examinations (IME)
These types of visits are not precisely patient care, but rather are generally "second opinion"
visits requested by insurance carriers or legal entities. We have a set fee for these procedures.
IMEs are arranged through our billing office
(billing@dizzy-doctor.com).
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Special tests not covered by some insurances
While nearly everything that we do is covered by most health insurance, there are a few tests that we offer
in CDH that are not covered by all insurances. For instance,
Computerized Dynamic Posturography is covered by Medicare, but not covered by either
Cigna or Blue Cross Blue Shield. Often we simply do not know the situation regarding whether we are paid for our work.
For persons not covered by Medicare, following the recommendation of insurance carriers, we require a signed
agreement for payment for CDP testing by the patient, should insurance not cover the bill, before proceeding.
This is called an "ABN" form. For persons whose insurance does not pay for posturography,
the procedure becomes a "self-pay" test.
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