Patient Resources > Handbooks / Forms > Office Polices

Keeping thousands of patients healthy requires a few guidelines to keep HMF offices operating smoothly. The following links will take you to pages where you can get the most important policies to remember.

Appointment Confirmation

Our automated reminder system will call to confirm your appointment two days in advance. If no one answers, it will leave a voice mail message.

Calling the offices

Our offices are busiest on Mondays and our phones are busiest between 8 and 10 a.m., and between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m.. If your call is not urgent and you can call at a less busy time, your time “on hold” will be minimal. Thursdays are our lightest days with the shortest hold times.

Cancellations/Rescheduling

Please give us at least 24 hours notice if you need to cancel or reschedule your appointment. We can accommodate another patient in your time slot if we know you won’t make it…one day, the patient we can accommodate may be YOU!

Co-payments

All co-payments are required at the time of your visit. We accept all credit cards, cash, checks and ATM transactions. The cost of billing is extremely high, so if you do not pay your co-payment at the time of your visit, we will charge an additional $20 for billing.

Emergency Calls

Our answering service takes our calls outside normal office hours. If your call is urgent, the service will have the HMF doctor on call return your call.

Flu Shots

Call our Flu Shot Hotline at (626) 397-8328 for up-to-date information.

Health Forms

If you have forms for our doctors to complete (camp, DMV, disability) please fax or mail them to our office along with a note requesting completion of these forms. The cost is $10 per form for turnaround in five business days and $25 per form for turnaround in less than five business days. Payment is expected at the time you pick up your completed forms as these charges may not be billed. You may pick these forms up at our front desk.

Insurance

We bill all insurances, but you must present your current ID card at each and every visit. In many cases, we have just 60 days to bill your insurance, so if you don’t provide current information at every visit, we may miss the window of opportunity to bill for you. If this happens, you will have to pay us directly and you will have to collect from your insurance.

We bill secondary insurance only if we are participating providers for that health plan. We only bill Medicare secondaries that communicate electronically with Medicare about your secondary coverage. If you have any questions, please contact your secondary insurance or Medicare.

Prescriptions

If you need a prescription refill, please have your pharmacist call us at least 48 hours in advance. For those medications that cannot be called into a pharmacy, we will call you when your written prescription is ready for pick up at our office. Again, we need 48 hours notice.

Arbitration Agreements

We require all our patients to sign an arbitration agreement. We firmly believe this practice insures that, if there’s a problem, we can continue to concentrate on providing healthcare while still preserving the rights of all parties. If you sign the agreement, you may later revoke it. However, we will not continue to see you as a patient and will send you a letter stating so.

Referrals & Authorizations

If you have HMO insurance and need to be seen by a specialist, we are required to submit a request for authorization HealthCare Partners. We do not authorize these services. The HealthCare Partners care management team will review the request, see that it meets guidelines and approve or deny the request. Please understand that the specialist who is authorized to see you will be one who is a preferred provider contracted with HealthCare Partners and may not be the specific one you have in mind.

Within 48 hours of your visit with us, we will submit the referral (if it’s non-urgent) to HealthCare Partners. HealthCare Partners has 10 days to review the request and mail you a letter notifying you of their decision. For this reason, it is imperative that your health plan have your current address on file, as they give this information to HealthCare Partners. The address on file with the health plan is where your authorization or denial will be mailed. Please do not call our office for the status of your authorization until at least 14 days after your office visit.