HDL Blood testing billing policy

Health Diagnostic Laboratory (HDL) Inc. blood analysis offers the most comprehensive assessment of risks factors associated with the diagnosis and treatment of cardio-vascular heart disease. This advanced lipid testing, while not exclusive to our office, is only available to only a handfull of physician offices in Colorado. HDL will bill your insurance and accept their payment as full coverage of your testing Per agreement with HDL you will not be billed for any charges not paid by insurance or HSA/ HRA. This is true even if your insurance payment is zero.

Please be aware that you will be scheduled for a follow up appointment to review HDL results. Because of the complexity of the HDL analysis during and after your follow up appointment Dr. Tanenbaum he will conduct a thorough review of your past medical and surgical history, habits such as smoking/drinking, genetic risk factors, allergies, medications, previous test results (including previous HDL testing, CIMT (carotid ultrasounds, heart scans, treadmill stress testing, etc. as well as the current HDL results. At the end of the visit he will take a look at all the risk assessments to determine if any additional testing is required or if a referral to a specialist is needed. This advanced testing is able to detect if a person is being over treated or under treated as LDL-C (standard lipid testing) is discordant and unreliable in a large percentage of cases. This is most prevalently seen in patients with insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and diabetes, IR leading to diabetes has now become an epidemic in our society. Many patients are also over treated as most doctors base their decisions only on LDL-C instead of the LDL-P numbers. Lipoprotein analysis will become the gold standard in the next 5-10 years.

As a result of the many steps needed to prepare your blood specimen for analysis, document the results, and to prepare for and conduct your follow up visit, you may be billed for an extended office visit. This will appear as two billing entries on your insurance claim. We will process and bill these charges to your insurance for payment. It has been our experience that most insurance companies allow for the coverage of these charges. However, we cannot guarantee payment as each insurance policy is established on an individual case basis. Please feel free to contact my office staff if you have any questions associated with the billing of the extended office visit charges.

In summary each patient receives personalized recommendations and care. Although the follow up visit may cost a little more than a standard office visit; the information received from HDL testing is shown statistically beneficial in preventing strokes and heart attacks. It is our goal to help you maintain good health. I hopeful that you will find the benefits of HDL testing to be money well spent.