Referrals

If you have an HMO or POS insurance plan, you will be required to obtain a referral prior to seeing a specialist or having certain testing done in your primary care physician's office. Referrals to specialists or for testing typically take 5-7 days for our office to process and for the insurance company or medical group to approve. Emergent referrals can be processed and approved within 24 hours. Once your referral has been approved, you will be contacted and asked to pick up your referral at our office. At your request, we can also fax your referral to the specialist office or testing facility.

In many cases, a copy of the specialist physician's office/consult notes, findings, and recommendations must accompany our referral request. As part of the referral process, our referral coordinator will contact your specialist's office to request copies of this information. If we do not receive the information within 48 business hours, we will contact you to request your assistance in obtaining the necessary documentation from the specialist to process your referral request.

If your specialist has requested that you schedule a future follow-up appointment or service, please call our office four weeks in advance of that appointment so that we can process your referral request. Since most referrals expire within 45-60 days from the date issued, we do not submit referral requests for greater than 30 days from your scheduled appointments date.

We encourage our patients to take an active role in the referral process so that requests can be submitted and approved in a timely manner. In addition, we strongly encourage our patients to read and understand their benefit plan so that they are familiar with what services are covered/not covered.