The following is to help you anticipate the financial and insurance aspects of your care. Our staff can answer your specific questions, so please feel free to contact us.
We are sensitive to the high cost of contemporary medical care and our burdensome healthcare system and promise to offer you the best value for professional services at Meridian. As an example, a second opinion with us not only provides you with unique angles on your case by senior practitioners (no fellows, residents or interns) but costs as much as 70% less than at major cancer centers *
Since we aim to provide truly independent advice to you and due to the alternative nature of our services, we regret that we cannot participate in insurance or Medicare (see footnote below) simply because insurance participation would contracturally allow insurance to dictate treatments based on insurance’s menu of coverage and their definitions of “standard of care”. As such, we are “Fee-For-Service” and “Out-of-Network” to provide you with truly independent professional advice and the broadest range of treatment options possible. However, we do provide a universal claim-form for all in-person services so you can submit payments to your insurance if you have a non-HMO plan (e.g. PPO etc) or a Flex Plan for potential reimbursement. Payment due at the time of service is payable in cash, check, bankwire or with major credit cards (VISA and MASTER only).
Dr. Chang’s fee schedule is simply based on time and effort and is pro-rated at $450 per half-hour (billing rate unchanged since 2012). Follow-up visits are $275-450 for 15-30 minutes, with a $275 minimum. Patients can choose to engage his services on an as needed basis. An initial one-time remote second-opinion review of records starts at $900. Online Zoom, phone and email consultations are also available for new and established patients, and all charges are based on the above rate. No insurance claim form is currently provided for email, phone or virtual consults.
Other indirect professional services: e.g. to coordinate with other professionals or designated family members regarding a patient’s care, to enter pre-authorizations or disputes with insurance or drug companies about coverages per your request, and to review test results or potential clinical trials etc can all be potentially subject to charges based on the pro-rated fee schedule above.
Billing for lab testing is done by your choice of laboratory (e.g. Quest, Labcorp or Bioreference etc) and is normally covered by insurance. You may request to do your testings via your in-network physician or use other arrangements or labs and locations more convenient to you to minimize your out-of-pocket costs. Similarly, any FDA approved and covered medications can be prescribed to be processed by your choice of pharmacy, and medications that are otherwise not covered can be ordered at discount pharmacy costs (e.g. Goodrx or Amazon etc) to minimize your costs.
For Tibetan medicine consultation, there is a suggested donation consultation fee of $125 to support the Tibetan Medicine Program of the Institute of East West Medicine. There is no insurance coverage for this as this is considered as outside of mainstream healthcare and no insurance forms will be provided as this is partially considered a donation.
For herbs and health supplements, Chinese and Tibetan herbal medicines etc, there is generally no insurance coverage, and no insurance forms will be provided.
If you have any further questions about our fees, please ask us.
Notice to Medicare patients: Dr. Chang has “opted out” of Medicare. If you are a Medicare patient and would like to consult him, it is your responsibility to identify yourself as a Medicare patient and sign an acknowledgement contract as required by Medicare, that you realize that Dr. Chang is not participating in Medicare. Please note that Medicare does not accept claim forms for reimbursement of care rendered by physicians who have opted out under any circumstances, and without Medicare acting as primary payor, supplemental Medicare or Medigap plans will not reimburse the services as well.
* For comparison, currently (2021) major cancer centers such as Dana Faber and MSKCC charges $2400-2750 for a remote second opinion (see here)
