How Sentire is Different
- You will pay your family physician immediately after the service is rendered.
- Your doctor will not interact with your insurance company for his or her fees
- You are free to submit a copy of the bill to your insurance company to count towards your deductible or even be reimbursed.
- Insurance companies may not recognize the bill as a medical expense
- Sentire does not use their codes
- Anytime you ask your doctor to work on your behalf, you will be billed. Examples include:
- Filling out forms
- The time it takes to have tests or drug prescriptions pre-authorized
- Fighting insurance company denials of tests or treatments
- Looking up advanced testing or treatment strategies (but only if it saves you a trip to another doctor or facility)
- The Sentire system is only for primary care, primarily family physicians
- OB/GYNs are not eligible to use this service
Fee Schedule
Registration and Annual Renewal
You will be charged $50 per year by your doctor to access primary care services using the Sentire system. For this fee you will receive:
- For the first registration, your doctor will learn your pertinent medical history
- For the first registration and annual renewals, your doctor will provide an annual review of recommended preventive services. This will likely be communicated to you by a phone call, email, or text message. It will rarely be necessary for you to physically come to the doctor’s office to complete this review.
In Office Face-to-Face Visits
| Assessment of each patient concern | Thorough | $45 |
| Moderate | $33 | |
| Brief | $21 | |
| Extra time fees beyond a standard length visit | $5/minute |
Examples:
- You have a lot of questions you want answered
- Your doctor has to ask an unusually long list of questions to sort out a problem
- Your doctor must spend an unusually long time discussing treatment options
- Your doctor has rules to follow on when he or she can appropriately bill this fee
- Most visits should not include these fees
Office Procedures
Mostly billed at Medicare rates
In office tests
Fees set to try to be average or below average cost compared to local markets
Information Management Fees
You pre-pay your doctor to communicate test results and what you should do about the results
| Common lab bundles (blood count, thyroid panel, etc.) | $3/test bundle |
| Advanced imaging (CT scans, MRIs, mammograms) | $10/test |
| You pre-pay your doctor for the time and hassle to write chronic prescriptions | $3/prescription |
Note: Your doctor may not bill for any extra time that is required to manage these issues, which could include calling a pharmacy, ordering a new test, or explaining the results and next steps recommended for an abnormal test.
Office Supplies
Billed at the doctors acquisition cost plus 10%
Note: Many supplies for procedures are included in the cost of the procedure.
Phone/Email/Text Visits
$15 when you contact your doctor with a concern, plus $7/minute for the exchange
- The time is just the phone or reading/writing time, not the time it takes the doctor to document the visit in the medical records
- For email/text visits, it is the actual time spent communicating, not the total time from when you first contacted your doctor to the time he or she finishes helping you.
- Information Management fees will also be billed, when appropriate.
Billing process
- You must enter your credit card or bank information in the Sentire website to become a patient of your doctor using the Sentire system.
- When the phone/email/text visit is completed, your doctor will soon after generate a bill for the service, which will be sent to you immediately by email or text message.
- In this message, you will be asked to approve the payment to your doctor by clicking on the appropriate button.
- Your doctor will then be paid immediately.
- You will have electronic access to a copy of the bill.
Rarely, your doctor may bill $5/minute if you did not initiate the communication, but your doctor had to work on your behalf. Examples:
Your doctor had to fill out forms to gain approval for a test or treatment a week after the office visit where the service was ordered.
Your doctor was contacted by another doctor who had questions about some aspect of your care.