Practice Policies

Billing and Payment Policy

Patients are required to pay their bills for rendered services not covered by their medical insurance. This includes deductibles, co-insurances, fees and non-covered services.

If you receive a bill from our office, please review it and pay it promptly. If you have a question regarding the bill, please call our billing representatives for a detailed explanation. Patients that ignore or fail to meet their financial responsibilities for rendered services will be considered for discharge from our practice.

For more about our billing policies, please visit here.

Cancellation Policy

Please give at least 48 hours notice if you are unable to keep your appointment. Please note you will be charged a fee for the office visit if you do not cancel with advance notice. Appointments for specialized testing require at least 72 hours notice for cancellation.

For more about our cancellation policy, please visit here.

Arrival Time and Late Arrivals to Appointments Policy

Please arrive on time to your scheduled appointment. We understand that our patients have very busy schedules, and we will try to accommodate anyone that arrives late to their appointment. However, if you arrive fifteen or more minutes late, we will do our best to accommodate you but we may need to reschedule your appointment to another day in order to avoid scheduling delays for our other patients and staff.

Common Courtesy

It is our goal to practice excellent medicine. At this time, the complexity of our lives and healthcare delivery has been complicated by rules imposed by insurance companies, drug formularies, and the federal government that may cause delays and inconveniences. We know some patients may get frustrated and may not fully understand the policies of  their insurance companies or that of our practice or that other factors can lead to difficulties or delays. We will do our best to help all patients sort through these complexities in a courteous and professional manner, and ask that you treat our staff courteously as well.

If you have a problem that you cannot settle with our staff, you can, and should, freely discuss it with one of our office managers.

It is our goal to continually improve the quality and efficiency of our medical care and service. We ask for and appreciate your cooperation and understanding in this group effort.

Emergencies

If you are experiencing a medical emergency,  please go to the nearest emergency room for immediate help.   

Non-Emergency Medical Questions and After-Hours Care Policy

Should you need to speak to one of The Asthma Center’s providers regarding a medical problem related to our specialty, allergy and immunology related issues, it is best to call during office hours.

If you have a medical question after office hours that you think cannot wait until our office re-opens, we have a provider on-call at all times to provide you with the best care possible.   You can reach the provider on-call, by calling our office at: 215-569-1111.  From there you can get the information to contact our page operator.  The page operator will contact the on-call provider.  If your call is not returned within 30 minutes, please call the operator again.   In case it is needed, please have your pharmacy phone number available to tell the provider.

First Appointment Checklist

For your first visit, make sure to bring the following:

• All completed forms and literature reviewed before arriving for initial visit
• Valid insurance card(s) and photo ID
• HMO referral (if needed)
• List of prescriptions and/or over-the-counter medication, including dose and frequency
• Reports of any recent x-ray or lab results

Please see the full first visit checklist here.

Follow-Up Visit Policy

Office visit availability is limited to one patient per appointment time; we do not double-book patients except for emergency visits. Scheduling visits months in advance, particularly during pollen season,  is necessary and often avoids unnecessary delays in getting good medical care while affording one the best chance of the most convenient time and date requested. Office follow-up visit availability is on a first-come, first served basis. In other words, if you call at the last minute, just before you need an office visit, or because you ran out of medication, most of your preferred appointment times will likely be taken. Therefore please schedule your next appointment at the end of each office visit.

We are usually able to see patients close to their scheduled appointment time. In some instances, you might see a patient called in ahead of you; these patients are not on the physician’s schedule and are receiving allergy injections or are undergoing other laboratory tests. In addition, emergencies may arise in our office which may result in some patients being seen sooner.

If you know you can’t make an appointment, please cancel it by phone and immediately reschedule your next follow-up appointment. It is the patient’s responsibility to schedule follow-up appointments as recommended and reschedule appointments when he/she cancels or misses an appointment. Please plan and be prepared to schedule your next appointment at the end of each office visit.

Annual Re-Registration

To keep our records up-to-date, we require that current patients fill out the Annual Re-Registration form once per year.

Group Provider Practice Policy

Our medical practice is a group practice. This means that each patient in the practice is a patient of our group as well as a patient of each individual medical provider.

The Asthma Center providers have common approaches to patient care. While our individual personalities may vary, our practice of medicine is quite uniform from provider to provider. This approach ensures continuity of care regardless of which provider is available. This approach also provides for continuous and consistent on-call emergency service for weekends and holidays. Finally it allows each patient to eventually get the benefit of the cumulative knowledge of the group which will always be greater than any single provider.

You will be able to schedule an appointment with the provider of your preference. Usually that provider will be available for your appointment, but on occasion provider schedules do change.  Under these atypical circumstances, we ask for our patients’ cooperation and understanding by seeing another provider at The Asthma Center that is available. Rest assured, all of our providers are committed to providing excellent medical care.

Mask Policy

Please contact our office for the current mask policy.

Parental / Guardian Consent for Evaluation & Treatment of Minor Child

If a parent or legal guardian will not be accompanying a minor (less than 18 years old), the parent or legal guardian must complete this form (download here).

Patient Responsibility

• All appointments must be scheduled. It is best to schedule your appointments well in advance in order to be able to receive a time and date that meets your needs. Therefore, when asked to return for a follow-up, please schedule your appointment before leaving the office.
• Please try to be on time for your appointment.
• Please give us the required notice if you must cancel your appointment. The Cancellation Policy is specified above.
• We ask that patients not smoke or wear heavy scents out of consideration for our asthma/allergy patients.
• Please do not bring food or drinks into our offices.
• If you think you may be late for your appointment, please call and ask whether or not we can accommodate you — before your arrival.

Prescription Policy

Prescriptions for medications are given at the time of your office visit. Enough medication is prescribed to last you until your next office visit and under normal circumstances, you should not run out of medication. In the event that you find you are running low on medication, please call your pharmacy to initiate a refill request. Your pharmacy will then contact our office.  Your chart will be reviewed by a provider, and a refill will be prescribed if it is appropriate at the time of the request. Please note, requests for refills typically will not be renewed after 6 months from your last visit.

Prescription refill authorizations are only given during normal working hours (8am – 4:30 pm) when we can review the patient’s records.

Prescription Change to Insurance Formulary Preferred Brand Policy

Many insurance companies have selected or are in the process of selecting “preferred” medications. Some pharmacies and drug formularies, at the request of your medical insurance company, have asked us to switch your prescribed medications to their preferred brand(s), which may be similar but not exactly the same as the medication we prescribed. Although you may do well on the insurance-preferred brand, we have no way of knowing in advance whether the insurance-preferred brand will be equally effective and as well tolerated by you as your provider-recommended medication. If you agree to follow the insurance/pharmacist/formulary recommendation, then please notify us directly and we will comply with your request. Please note that not switching medications to the insurance-preferred brand may require the patient to incur additional expenses for medications.

Primary Care Physician Policy

Your provider at The Asthma Center is a specialist and cannot act as your primary care physician or general doctor. All patients should have a primary care physician manage other medical symptoms that are not due to allergy, asthma, sinus and related problems. If you have a medical problem which is related to our specialty or a question regarding our treatment, then call us directly to discuss it. All other medical problems should be reviewed with your primary care physician.

HMO Referral Policy

With HMO insurance, your healthcare insurance requires that you have a valid referral for each and every office visit and procedure, which in turn, gives our group authorization to provide these services. Your primary care physician is the only one who may issue a referral.

It is advisable to obtain your referral well in advance of your office visit with The Asthma Center specialist. ATTEMPTING TO GET A PROPER REFERRAL ON THE DAY OF YOUR VISIT IS USUALLY UNSUCCESSFUL AND MAY UNNECESSISARILY DELAY YOUR APPOINTMENT.

Patients arriving at our office without the proper referral will be offered the following options:

• a) Reschedule the office visit or
• b) You may use our telephone to call your primary physician in order to request an immediate referral by fax (urgent cases only). This usually is time consuming and unsuccessful since your primary care physician may not be available at the time of your visit or may require advance notice for referrals.

National Provider Identifier (NPI)

For your convenience, the following are the National Provider Identifier (NPI) numbers for our practice and individual physicians which are required on all referral forms.