New Patients:

Our New Patient Welcome Appointment includes an in-depth visit with an Obesity Medicine Specialist.  You will review your past medical history, weight history, and family history.  We will measure baseline vital signs and you will undergo a basic physical exam.  You will also get a baseline body composition analysis.  If you haven’t had labs done (or we think we need more to understand your body better), we will get those ordered.  We will learn about what makes you tick, what your obstacles to success may be, and what your hopes and dreams are.  Using that information, we will engage in shared decision-making to craft a realistic treatment plan to make it happen.  The total cost of the new patient visit is $225 ($175 is due at the time of the visit after applying the $50 deposit collected to secure the visit).  After your new patient appointment, you will choose one of two monthly packages for ongoing support:

Monthly Packages:

Pretty much every study achieving clinically meaningful, healthy weight loss tells us that frequent interactions with a trained healthcare team are essential for success.  Over time, as you begin to transition to weight maintenance, the interactions can decrease, but at the onset of a weight loss journey, the frequency with which you touch base with your care team is correlated with your outcomes.

Ultimate Care:           $325/month

 

 

  • 3 office visits per month
    • One visit must be with an Obesity Medicine Specialist
  • Monthly body composition analysis
  • 35% discount on HWL supplements
  • Access to HWL nutrition coach via SMS text messaging

 

Comprehensive Care:                     $200/month

 

 

  • 2 office visits per month
    • One visit must be with an Obesity Medicine Specialist
  • Monthly body composition analysis
  • 25% discount on HWL supplements

 

 

“What gets you to goal is what keeps you at goal”

Study after study tells us that following active weight loss, continued interaction with the healthcare team is required for the intervention to be durable – for the weight to stay off.  We won’t abandon you when you get to your goal – and we don’t want you to abandon us!

Although it may seem as though maintaining weight loss should be easier than actively losing it, for many people, it’s actually much more difficult.  During active weight loss, you see the results of your hard work.  Week after week, month after month, you celebrate the changes.   During weight maintenance, the entire goal is to stay the same.  It’s hard to celebrate stability.  It’s hard to justify putting your time and energy into something when you don’t see changes happening as a result of it.  This is a crucial time for most people in their weight loss journey and should never be overlooked!

Once you and your clinician decide you are at goal and ready to flip into maintenance of loss, you will start decreasing the frequency of your interactions.  If it turns out to be too soon – no problem – we will crank it back up again and try a bit later.

Maintenance/Essential Care:                         $125/month

  • 1 office visit per month
    • One visit with an Obesity Medicine Specialist
  • Monthly body composition analysis
  • 15% off all HWL supplements

**not for initial treatment

Obesity is a chronic, relapsing disease.  Our goal is to help you create a foundation of habits and systems that prevent relapse.  We don’t want you to come back and start over from the beginning with us someday!  Although that’s a great business model for profitability (and is incredibly common in this space), it goes against our core values and guiding principles.  Once you and your clinician have decided that you are maintaining your loss and you likely don’t need us as much, you will start spacing your visits out.  We will schedule periodic check-ins to make sure things aren’t starting to fall apart.  Think of these visits like the regular check-ups you have with your dentist or eye doctor.  Instead of actively working on problems and issues, you are screening for them instead.

Remission:                         $125/visit

  • frequency of visits: variable
  • body composition analysis at each visit
  • 15% off all HWL supplements

**not for initial treatment

Details:

** We require a $50 non-refundable deposit to hold all new appointment appointments. At the time of the visit, this will be applied to any balance due.

** Appointments that are missed and any appointment that is canceled/rescheduled less than 48 hours prior will result in a $50 fee.  This cannot be deducted from future scheduled payments and must be paid before scheduling future appointments. 

*Self-pay patients will be required to keep a credit card on file and monthly packages will process automatically on the first day of every month. Services purchased as part of a package must be redeemed within the calendar month and cannot be carried over to subsequent months. If you choose to cancel your recurring charge, you must notify us in writing (by email or via the patient portal) at least 48 hours before the first day of the month.

*A 5% discount will be given to patients who purchase six months of any package upfront.  If a refund is requested before the end of 6 months for any reason, a $150 early-termination fee will be deducted from the refund.

*Ultimate Care patients can connect with their nutrition coach via SMS text messaging during regular business hours. In addition to personalized support and encouragement, the nutrition coach may also offer recipes and access to support tools.

*Appointment times are limited to availability.  Although we will make all attempts to reschedule appointments in the same month they were originally scheduled, we cannot guarantee future appointment times will be available.

** Lab tests and prescription drug coverage are completely separate from coverage for medical office visits.  Regardless of whether our medical office visits are covered, most people with health insurance have some benefits for these services and we will always do our best to work within the existing system.  When applicable, we send prescriptions to the pharmacy of your choice.  When applicable, we provide lab orders with appropriate codes so that you can get labwork done at any lab that is in-network for you.

** FSA and HSA plans have a variety of rules regarding how they function.  It is up to you to understand the nuances of your own FSA/HSA plan, including what services they will reimburse you for and what documentation they require for reimbursement.  Although we are happy to provide you with a receipt listing services provided, we cannot guarantee reimbursement and we do not submit claims directly to FSA/HSA plans the same way we submit them to traditional insurance companies.  

Patients Wishing to use Commercial Health Insurance:

Heartland Weight Loss is in-network with most commercial insurance plans except Blue Cross plans. Plans often cover appointments with Obesity Medicine specialists, although coverage is subject to individual policy rules and regulations and is not guaranteed. Patients utilizing anti-obesity medications as part of their treatment are required to have monthly appointments and body composition analyses ($25/ month – these are not covered by insurance)

Office visits with Obesity Medicine specialists are billed using traditional medical office visit CPT codes.  These vary based on the complexity of the medical decision-making required during the visit, and/or the time spent performing and charting the visit. We strongly encourage you to call your insurance provider before your appointment to confirm that Heartland Weight Loss and our providers are in-network and your policy does not have an obesity exclusion.

More about Health Insurance

Just like other chronic diseases, we believe the treatment of obesity should be covered under the umbrella of the traditional healthcare system.  However, not all insurance carriers feel this way.  They are allowed to exclude certain things, such as some or all treatments for obesity, including medical services, medications, and/or surgery.  Health insurance represents a contract between you and your insurance company.  Understanding what your insurance plan will and will not cover is your responsibility.  These contracts specify several things that you need to be aware of:

  1. What type of services are covered by the contract (and which are excluded)
  2. Which providers are considered to be in-network.  (Being in-network means that the insurance company and the providers have agreed to a predetermined fee schedule for services.  This protects you and your insurance company from being obligated to pay outlandish fees for in-network providers, but it doesn’t guarantee that the insurance company will pay the fees. That falls under #3.)
  3. What portion of the services that each of you is obligated to pay (deductibles, copays, coinsurance, etc.)

Office visits with Obesity Medicine specialists are billed using traditional medical office visit CPT codes.  These vary based on the complexity of the medical decision-making required during the visit, and/or the time spent performing and charting the visit.  We cannot tell you in advance what CPT code we will be using as we don’t know how much medical decision-making will be done and/or how much time it will take, but the vast majority of our visits and their associated charges are:

  • 99204 (new patient, moderate complexity):  $247.97
  • 99214 (established patient, moderate complexity): $161.67

Occasionally, visits are more or less complicated or take minimal to additional time and are billed differently:

  • 99205 (new patient, high complexity): $312.27
  • 99213: (established patient, minimal complexity): $109.47
  • 99215: (established patient, high complexity): 225.00

*If we bill these charges to your insurance company and they consider it a non-covered service, you will be financially responsible for the full amount billed.  You may switch to self-pay at the subsequent visit, but we will not adjust the fee retroactively.