Billing and insurance
What an emergency visit is billed as, how we handle insurance, and what to do if you are uninsured or have a bill you do not understand.
If this is an emergency, come in or call 911. Cost never decides your care — you can ask about it at any point.
Cost never decides your care
We do not decide whether to see you based on your insurance. You are assessed and screened whatever you can pay. You can ask about cost at any point — many people do while they wait, and asking never delays your care. Paperwork can be filled in while you wait; being seen never waits on it.
A claim about our own conduct, deliberately — the statutory version awaits counsel's answer on which screening obligations attach to each facility, and goes back cited to the authority rather than asserted in our voice.
Insurance and network status
Two bills, and why
For the emergency room itself: the room, the nursing, the equipment, being open at 3 AM whether anyone comes in or not.
For the doctor who treated you, billed separately.
If you had them.
Uninsured and self-pay
Balance billing protections
Questions about a bill
Call the number on the bill first — the facility fee and the physician fee may be billed by different entities, and the right one is faster than the main line.
Ask for an itemized bill. Always available, and the single most useful thing to ask for.
Ask whether it has been through your insurance yet. A bill that arrives before the explanation of benefits is often not final.
Then call us.