phone: 905-639-0884
fax: 905-639-0824
Dr. Laura Foster
Family Physician
103-2200 Fairview St
Burlington, On L7R 4H9
Uninsured Services/Out of Pocket Expenses with the return to NEW NORMAL September 2022
It is our goal, as your family doctor, to provide you with the best medical care even during the difficult times of the COVID Pandemic. As we return to the NEW Normal we are returning to our previous protocols. As you may know OHIP pays for most of your medical visits, however, there are many time-consuming services which OHIP does not cover and which are completed outside regular office hours at evening time and on weekends. As you may imagine we are buried in forms which have to filled out in both extensive and minute medico legal detail.
Our policy to charge for these uninsured services in accordance with the guidelines recommended by Ontario Medical Association.
While you may choose to pay for individual uninsured services on a 'Pay-per Service' basis, we have set up an 'Annual Fee Plan ' (also known as 'Block Fee' for your convenience .
If you choose to sign up for the Block Fee you would be covered for an entire year . This plan follows the guidelines of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (which can be found on their website at www.cpso.on.ca in the policies section under Block Fees and Uninsured Services).
For the large majority of patients this program has not changed your interaction with the office. Letters, notes and forms have always been charged in the past. The most significant change impacted prescription renewals. Prescription renewals at the time of your regular office appointment were obviously not charged as it was just part of the office visit. The $30 charges occur for fax renewal requests from your pharmacy when you do not wish to make an office appointment. During Covid we have had an increase in patients directly calling the office for prescription renewals as they were unaware of protocol having previously been seen in the office for their prescription renewals. Now that we are moving toward post Covid, we would like you to minimize these calls. For medicolegal reasons we still require a paper fax or digital request from the pharmacy which we have to integrate into our EMR prior to faxing out the prescription renewal to your pharmacy and hence maintaining a copy of the prescription in your EMR file. In other words, CALL your Pharmacy first not the OFICE
To help with the introduction of the Uninsured Services Program our office needs to know whether you wish to select the block fee option or if you wish to pay for each uninsured service at the time it is rendered. Please note; payments can be made by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, cash or check for your convenience.
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Uninsured Benefits for Services can be viewed here
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To download and print a copy of the Block Fee Enrollment form