Free Consult vs. Actual Visit: Where the Line is Drawn

Hello out there! Once again, this is your faithful receptionist Jill here to report on tidbits that may or may not be helpful. Your choice!

I get an awful lot of questions about this one, so I think I should clarify now in writing.

When new patients see the free consult we offer, they get really excited (as well they should). An experienced doctor of internal and bariatric medicine giving a free visit? Is this too good to be true? Doctors normally charge out the wazoo for things, how can this be?

The answer is simple: until any testing is done, the visit remains free. We will ask you ahead of time to fill out the necessary papers from our website (especially the nutrition evaluation--very important if you don't want to do anything beyond the "free" part of the visit) and make up a chart for you in the office. You can ask all the questions you want to the doctors, and they use everything you filled out for them (the medical history and nutrition evaluation) to try and tailor their advice as specifically to you as possible. They'll answer any questions on past medical events in your life, why it seems that you can't lose weight now, what habits you've formed and why, and advise you as much as they can.

When the visit stops being a free one is when the Indirect Calorimetry machine gets pulled out. This nifty machine is a ten minute breathing test that measures your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). What this means is it tests how many calories you'd burn if you just sat around all day. This is an $80.00 test. BCBS HMO patients, your plan doesn't cover the test and you will have to pay upfront. The rest of you it is dependent on your personal plan whether or not you're covered. If you're a self-pay you also have to pay up front. This is an important test because it helps the doctors to realize how fast your metabolism is and how to work with it for effective weight loss. It also determines how many calories the doctors would like you to eat per day, and the minimal amount of exercise you would need to do to start losing weight.

After patients take the IC (and those who are serious about healthy weight loss do so right away) the free consult turns into an actual visit. So yes, we do charge for the visit at that point. We try to let you know all this ahead of time or during the visit, but some patients are still suprised when they hear that they were charged.

Don't blame me, though. The doctor is the one who determines who gets charged. Don't complain to them either--they're just doing their job.

So now you know. And if you ask me on the phone, you'll hear this same spiel. I will let you in on a little secret: those who "skip" the free consult and go ahead with the IC test lose at least three pounds in the first week. After that it's up to ten pounds the next time we see them. It continues from there. So while the first visit may not always be free, you do get your money's worth. ^_^