What to expect at your visit

If you are a new patient with Dr. Warner:

When you call the office to schedule your appointment as a new patient with Dr Warner, our staff will send you an email from our scheduling system.  This email will confirm details of the time and date of your appointment, but more importantly, it includes information on how to access our patient portal, and which sections in that portal to fill out for us.  You will also receive a separate email confirming your appointment with our health coach (see below).  This email will include a link to an online lifestyle questionaire; please be sure to fill this out prior to your appointment with the coach.  This will allow our health coaches and Dr Warner to learn more about how you’re living right now, and will save you some time in the office.

Each new patient will meet with both Dr Warner and one of our health coaches.  The appointment with Dr Warner will last 75 minutes and the appointment with the coach will last an hour.  They do not have to be done on the same day; we’ll try to have you see the coach prior to seeing Dr Warner.

We ask that you bring along any current labwork or other studies that are pertinent to your visit, or upload them onto your patient portal. This will help us avoid redundancy.  Typically, after your appointment you’ll be asked to get more labs in order to make a full treatment plan.

Once that labwork is back—usually several weeks—you’ll have your follow up appointment with Dr Warner.  This will last 45 minutes; subsequent visits will last 30-45 minutes.

It may be recommended –and you may choose— to have further visits with our health coaches.  These will be arranged separately and will incur a separate charge.

It is important to your care that we are aware of all medications, supplements, herbals, over the counter medicines and recreational drugs that you take, so we can avoid interactions.  That is why we consider it SO VITAL that you complete your forms in the portal prior to each visit.  We appreciate your taking the time to fill these forms out carefully and completely; if you hurriedly type in something, you’ll likely forget some vital information.  This could impact our ability to care for you.  Also, even if you *think* nothing has changed since the last time you did an update, please fill out the “returning patient” form in the portal. You’d be surprised how often things are different and people don’t realize it til they are asked.

If you are booking a GYN visit:

If you are new to the practice, an annual visit will be 60 minutes.  During these visits, we will have time to review your medical history, review current meds/supplements, and perform an exam.  If you have specific gynecologic concerns or problems, we suggest that you book your visit as a holistic consultation so we have more time.  An exam might be performed at that time if deemed appropriate.
If you are an established patient and need your annual exam, the visit will be 30 minutes.  We do offer the opportunity to get *routine* labs done ahead of time (since we know that many women don’t really see any provider other than their gyn!) and these can be briefly reviewed at the time of the visit.  However, we strongly discourage booking an exam and discussion of ongoing medical concerns on the same day, as we would not have sufficient time to do both well.  An exception to this is reviewing hormone replacement labwork, especially if you’re doing well.

Please understand that any appointment that you are booked for is a time slot, as with a therapist/counselor. If you arrive late, that will cut into your time with the doctor. If you do not fill out your portal documents, your appointment will be rescheduled.  Dr Warner works very hard to stay on schedule and does not feel it appropriate to keep other patients waiting simply because you arrive late. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation in this matter.

Payment/Insurance

Payment for service is expected at the time of your office visit. While insurance may cover the care you receive in our office, we do not process insurance billing. Instead, we will provide you with a form to submit to your insurance company to collect allowable reimbursement costs under your personal plan. Generally, insurance plans do have coverage for out of network services once your deductible is met; exceptions to this are HMO plans and Medicare. Please check with the customer services representative of your plan for details about your own policy. Dr Warner has opted out of Medicare participation, which means that you will not be able to submit to Medicare, nor get coverage from a secondary insurance, as there can be no denial from Medicare.

As a matter of office policy, we will not compromise your care to accommodate insurance company guidelines. However, we will do our utmost to help you get reimbursed for services provided within the guidelines set by your insurance company.

Cancellation Policy

We require 24 hours prior notice, if you can not keep a scheduled office appointment. This allows us to accommodate other patients who have been waiting for a visit time. All patients who fail to cancel, or cancel appointments with fewer than 24 hours notice, will be subject to a minimum $30 cancellation fee. However, life is unpredictable. We realize that occasionally 24 hours notice is not possible, so we will consider a one-time cancellation with no fee incurred.  Note that cancellation for a Monday appointment needs to happen on Friday, not over the weekend.

There’s more to healing than drugs and surgery