Financial Disclosures

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At North Woodward Internal Medicine, we believe in transparency and the importance of a relationship built on trust.  The healthcare industry is enormous, consuming about 20% of our domestic GDP.  Closer to home,  personal healthcare costs continue to rise.   So we feel it is important that you understand how we operate and how we are paid for the services we deliver.

 

• We are privately owned.  Every one of our physicians is an owner of the practice and we operate as a S-corportaion.  The bottom line is that every physician is free to practice how they feel best for their individual patients.

• We are independent.  Our practice is not owned by a hospital, health plan or any external entity.  Thus, we are free to recommend testing, imaging and refer to specialists wherever we feel is best for our patients and not because we are financially obligated.  

• All of our revenue is generated from patient care activities.  We see patients, we bill for these services, we get paid for these services.  That's it, no side deals.   You'll know exactly what we get paid.  We don't make money from testing, referral to any entity, service and specialist, nor for prescribiing certain medications.  

• Our recommendations are based on science.  To the best of our abilities, our care recommendations are based on evidence generated through scientific study.  We don't pedal vitamins and herbs.  We don't do non-scientific studies and testing which waste your valuable resources.  If we do recommend something for which evidence is weak, we'll let you know and help you make the best decision for your health.  

• We fully participate with your insurance company or third party payer.  We take the contracted rates from insurance as payment in full for the services we provide, whether its an HMO, Medicare, PPO etc.  

• Incentives.  Because we do participate with insurance and Medicare, we feel obligated to participate in their quality improvement initiatives.  The benefit may be simply being allowed to continue to be a provider for that insurance or being a preferred provider in the network (which often lowers your co-pay).  However, more and more insurance companies are providing financial rewards to physicians and practices who meet certain thresholds in various quality metrics.  We aggressively pursue these programs to demonstrate the quality of our care and can benefit financially from such incentive programs.  Incentive rewards for our practice added about 15% to our total revenue in 2015.  

 

We thought you deserve to know.  If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask your doctor.  We've got nothing to hide.