25 Jun Avoid Common Pitfalls When It Comes to No Cost Preventive Care

Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative covers certain preventive care services at no additional cost to you. Health is a key part of happiness, so we want to empower you to make the most of your preventive care benefits.

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Understanding preventive care helps you maximize the payoff of staying healthy. Follow these three steps to make the best use of your benefits:

• Schedule your annual wellness exam. A wellness exam is considered preventive and included with your coverage and gives you the chance to talk with your doctor about your overall health. The doctor will take measurements, perform a physical exam, review medications and discuss any social factors that could be impacting your health. Depending on your age and risk factors, the exam might result in certain follow-up blood tests or cancer screenings that are recommended for your age.

• Know what’s on the list of no cost preventive care and use it to talk with your in-network doctor. Services that make it onto the list of no cost preventive care are those that are proven to be of high value by national experts. Take a look at what’s on the list here. You should ask your doctor to stick to services that are on the list if you want to avoid additional charges.

• Understand when care is not preventive. Doctors bill their services as preventive when they have no reason to believe anything is wrong. But the medical codes doctors use to bill us for preventive care are different from the medical codes for diagnostic care or treatment, even if the tests or services are the same. If you raise a concern during your wellness visit, your doctor may order labs or tests in response. Those labs could be billed by your doctor as diagnostic, not preventive, and will likely to be subject to cost sharing.

It’s your right to make the decisions with your doctor about the medical care you receive, and it certainly may be worth it to pay something toward your care if you want to discuss concerns freely with your doctor. By providing you with this information, we want to empower you to make the choice that’s best for you.

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