Dr. T w. Curry thinks he is god!!!!!!!

Hello all! I got a letter the other day just like alot of you did for Dr. Curry office.
This is what it said.
"This is to inform you of recent changes we have made in out office. In order to serve you better.
As a result of numerous insurance claim denials and our practice taking a substantial financial loss, we feel it necessary to entirely cease all existing insurance contracts. We will no longer be participating provider under ANY insurance plan. All charges will now be collected BEFORE a service will be provided."

What the hell?? First thing i did was call his office and canceled my next appointment. Everyone needs to do this!!! This is a great way to answer this letter. In is pocket. I really like the part "In order to serve you better." Right! I didn't much like Dr Curry after i had my surgery. I never saw him again. Go into his office and i only would see the nurse.

That is awful of his office to do.  So sorry.  What a quack to not accept that anymore.  I understand not accepting new but established patients.  Awful!

Sounds like he's not interested in his patients, only in his pocket book. I'm with you, get another doctor! Fred

I can understand from the business point of view that this is necessary.  But to say,  "in order to serve YOU better"?    How does this serve the patients better?  

From a financial standpoint, I think he's going to have a hard time being a cash-pay only office.  I thought a good majority of his patients were Lap-Bands... which is usually covered.  Perhaps the problem is his insurance coordinator or whomever does his billing.

Sounds like he was doing surgeries without the approval from the insurance companies first.  No wonder he lost money.  Why would he have denials if an insurance company approved the surgery??

I agree Debbie, this is just what this sounds like. Why would any insurance company approve then not pay? He must be jumping the gun and doing them before approval and THAT is greedy in and of itself. Guess it not only bit him on the butt but his patients as well.I am sorry to hear this.

Sue

Hi,

I think it sucks, but the reality is that for the right cash pay price, he can still encourage many who would cash pay somewhere else like Mexico to consider coming to Ohio instead. I could give you a long list of bariatric surgeons who want their surgical fee upfront even with insurance. THe list would include almost every surgeon who does the sleeve in California, a half dozen in TX that I know of and this seems to be the trend just about everywhere else.

A surgeon in CA told me that many insurance companies approve a surgery, never pay, change their mind or take so long to pay in addition to paying so little, that they dont want to be bothered working with insurance at all.

The letter was stupid and insensitive to patients that he already has in his care though.

Babs

I'm with you on the "in order to serve you better" part. How is it to serve YOU better??  On the other hand my husband had bad sinus problems years ago and went to a ENT office to get it checked out. He had a deviated septum that was in bad shape and needed to be fixed. So the insurance that we had at that time was called, info given and approval code received.  Surgery was a week or so later.  Then we get a letter from the insurance DENYING the surgery because it was COSMETIC.  Fixing a deviated septum was cosmetic?  The doctor sent paperwork after paperwork to those morons, talking to them on the phone. WE called and finally called the main office at hubby's work trying to get it taken care of.  They NEVER paid and hubby's company finally got another insurance. Not that it's that much better but anything was better than the other office!

Unfortunately we have been forced to out of network status because of several issues.  The primary one being that, since I have a practice that is 100% dedicated to bariatric surgery, all of the work I do is related to the diagnosis code 278.01/morbid obesity.  Insurance companies do not reimburse for any services related to this code, I don't care what they say, they just don't.  Many bariatric surgeons get around this by using things such as hypertention or diabetes as primary codes but this is actually fraudulent as this is not the disease the patient came to me to treat, it is obesity.  Until insurance companies wake up and smell the coffee, this is what choice we have left. The next issue is that we have a lot of band patients in our practice.  Insurance companies do not reimburse for gastric band adjustments in general, at least in Ohio, as the code for a fill is S2083.  Codes that begin with an S are considered temporary codes and are usually not paid. The kind poster of the original message did not mention that our charge for a band adjustment including a visit with our dietitian is only $100, and the charge for a VSG follow up is only $60.  These charges are below the market rate in the area.  We then bill it to the patients plan and they get reimbursed according to their out of network benefits.  For most patients it'll probably be not much more (if any) than their copay.