New Patients
Thank you for choosing HovaCare Clinic for your health care needs. The Physicians and staff of this office would like to welcome you. We hope we can make your visit as pleasant and comfortable as possible.
During your first visit, we must have appropriate medical insurance and demographic information. You may need to obtain authorization from your insurance carrier prior to your appointment. Feel free to contact our office for help on obtaining your medical records from other physicians, clinics, or hospitals.
We will request for their name, office phone number and fax number.
To help familiarize you with our office, we are listing some of our policies below. If you don’t find what you are looking for here, be sure to contact us. We’ll be happy to help you.
Appointments
We encourage you to contact our office to schedule an appointment. Same-day and Next-day appointments are available for your convenience.
Kindly make every effort to keep your appointment. If you are unable to keep your appointment please call this office at least 1 business day in advance to cancel or reschedule. This courtesy allows another patient to be seen more conveniently who may suddenly be sick and need immediate care.
In order for our doctor to make a recommendation on your illness, it is necessary that you bring a list of all your medications and medical records. If you need help in obtaining your medical records from other physicians, clinics, or hospitals, kindly provide us with their name, office phone number and fax number.
New patient visits may take up to 1 hour, allowing time for checking in, collecting insurance information, seeing the doctor, scheduling tests, getting blood tests arranged, and setting your bill.
Follow up visits may take up to 30 minutes to allow for insurance reverification, seeing the doctor and arranging future follow ups.
We try our best to stay on time as we know your time is valuable. We will try to inform you of delays as soon as we can.
We see patients on Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM.
Appointments can be made by calling our office during regular hours at (210) 642-8300.
We are here to help you and hope that we can provide you with the best possible care. We look forward to seeing you.
Registration
Kindly download, print, read carefully, complete and bring the forms in our website ‘forms’ section to your appointment. For the convenience of our patients, we also offer on- line patient portal. Please feel free to register.
When you come in for your FIRST VISIT with us, be sure to bring the following items:
- Photo ID
- Insurance Card
- List of Current Medications
- All medication bottles ( preferred)
When you come in for your FOLLOW UP visit with us, be sure to bring the following items:
- Photo ID
- Insurance Card
- List of NEW MEDICATIONS OR STOPPED/CHANGED MEDICATIONS SINCE LAST VISIT
- All medication bottles ( preferred)
Insurance
We accept most major health insurance plans in our office, including those listed below:
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas
- Cigna
- United healthcare
- Aetna
- Humana
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- Superior healthcare
- Multiplan
- PHCS
- TML
- Tricare south
Prescription Refills
When needing a prescription refill, please contact our office 48 hours in advance. As a general policy, we do not refill prescriptions after hours or on the weekends. When you call our office to request the refill, please have the following information available:
- Name of your medication
- Dosage of your medication
- Pharmacy name , phone number and fax
- A number where we can reach you with questions
You may also call your pharmacy to send an electronic refill request to our office.
Financial Policy
Patient must understand their OWN network, plan benefits, and plan limitations. Your health insurance is an agreement between you and your insurance. All charges are ultimately your responsibility, whether you have insurance or not. Not all services are covered under all plans, regardless of whether our doctors consider the care medically necessary. Because there are so many plans, it is not possible for us to know the specific details of your coverage. By making a copy of your card, it does not confirm that we are part of your Network. We always do our best, but failure of our office staff to identify out-of-network plans does not waive your responsibility for payment of services rendered.
We are in network with most traditional PPO plans: Our recommendation is to call your insurance about a week before your appointment and ask if your plan’s network includes our office, and what patient cost sharing may be applied. You authorize your insurance to pay us directly.
Bring patient’s Insurance Card to every visit. Patients with insurance are responsible for ensuring that our insurance records and other information are up to date. Patients who have not presented a valid active insurance card will be considered self-pay/cash-pay- and they must pay in full at the time of visit at check in. Our front office staff will tell you your account balance and ask if you want to make full payment. Patients will have full responsibility for charges if we cannot process a claim due to incomplete, inaccurate or obsolete information. If your insurance changes, you must notify us immediately (even if you do not yet have your card); delays caused by patients can result in the claim being uncollectible from insurance, resulting in patient having full responsibility for all charges.
Co-Pay, Co-insurance, Deductibles, Self-Pay are due at the time of Service. Co-Pay is always expected at date of service during check in. Copay is due at EVERY VISIT whether it is new, follow up, lab result check up, etc. For patients with high deductible plans, a $100 payment will be collected on date of service towards the office visit. In some cases, we will ask for additional payment towards coinsurance or deductible prior to treatment.
We will file your insurance for you at no added cost. For this convenience, we ask that you provide us with insurance updates at each visit.
The balance not paid by your insurance will be your responsibility to us
MEDICARE deductible and co- insurance. Our patients with medicare are required by medicare to pay out of pocket an annual deductible. You are also responsible by law, for the 20% difference between Medicare allowable and the Medicare reimbursement. These requirement is published on the medicare website and the actual amount is updated by medicare on its website. We will verify if you have met your medicare deductible at check in. if not, this payment will be requested at your first visit to the clinic in the calendar year. You may elect to pay all or pay a minimum of $100 towards the office visit. Payment is due at time of check in. For any questions, kindly call your medicare representative to clarify.
All procedures and lab services have fees, in addition to the visit fee. Co-pay is usually for office visit only, and does not typically cover procedures (e.g.lesion removal, incision, injection or other treatment). Estimates for medical procedures are not typically given by the doctor; estimates can be provided, but procedures will typically need to be rescheduled for another day. A skin or tissue sample must be treated as if it could be cancerous, even if it is removed primarily at the patient’s request, and will result in both excision/biopsy fees and pathology fees. Labs, imaging, special stains, and other test sometimes must be ordered, and may be furnished by independent sources to complete a diagnosis. We are not responsible for those charges; Contact those billing facilities for billing questions.
Bills are DUE UPON RECEIPT. We are required to collect CO-PAY, DEDUCTIBLE, AND CO-INSURANCE. Past due balances will be assessed a $10 statement fee for each additional statement we must send. Any self-pay, out of network, or other courtesy adjustments will be rescinded if account becomes over 30 days past due. We may charge 18% interest or as allowed by law for any delinquent payment. We exhaust efforts to resolve balances prior to use of a collection agency, however, additional fees up to 50% of your charges may accrue from collections activity.
Appointment Cancellation Fees. We make numerous efforts to remind you of appointments. Out of courtesy to other patients that need appointments, please notify us if you need to cancel at least one full business day prior. If you miss your appointment and do not notify us at least 1 business day from your scheduled appointment time, you will be billed $25 for established patients, $75 for new patients, $75 for returning patients that have not been seen in our office for over 2 years, and up to $300 if you miss a scheduled procedure.
