Insurance & Practice Policies

Insurance & Payment Policy

Patients, please update any changes to your insurance by emailing [email protected] or by calling our billing team at 310-659-7147.

  • Payment is due at the time of service unless arrangements have been made in advance by your insurance carrier. Any balance due on your account will be collected at the time of any visit. We accept cash, Visa, MasterCard, American Express and personal check. Checks returned for non-sufficient funds will be charged a $25 administrative fee.
  • Please note that your insurance policy is a contract between you and your insurance company. As a service to you, we will file your insurance claim if you assign the benefits to the doctor – in other words, if you agree to have your insurance company pay the doctor directly. If your insurance company does not pay the practice within a reasonable period, we may request a payment from you. If we later receive a check from your insurer, we will refund any overpayment to you.
  • We have made prior arrangements with many insurance companies and other health plans to accept an assignment of benefits (In-Plan Network). We will bill them, and you are required to pay a co-payment at the time of your visit.
  • If you are insured by a plan that we do not have a prior arrangement with (Out-of-Plan Network), we will prepare and send the claim for you. If you are responsible for a deductible and/or co-insurance, it is due at the time of your visit.
  • Not all insurance plans cover all services. In the event your insurance plan determines a service to be “not covered,” you will be responsible for the complete charge. Payment is due upon receipt of a statement from our office.
  • You, the patient, remain at all times responsible for understanding what your health plan will and will not cover. If you are unclear about any financial aspect of your health care, please contact your health plan or ask to speak to a member of our billing staff.
  • As of January 1, 2012, a small administrative fee will be charged for any forms that need to be filled out by the office including disability, return to work, special equipment requests, etc. Additionally, a charge may apply to certain after-hours and weekend calls--especially if a medication needs to be refilled or called in. Please contact the office to find out more about fees.

Notice to Patients about the Open Payments/Sunshine Act

The Open Payments database is a federal tool used to search payments made by drug and device companies to physicians and teaching hospitals. It can be found at https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov.



For informational purposes only, a link to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments web page is provided here. The federal Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires that detailed information about payment and other payments of value worth over ten dollars ($10) from manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, and biologics to physicians and teaching hospitals be made available to the public.

Service Dog Policy

Although we love our four-legged family members, we no longer can permit animals to accompany patient visits unless they are considered to be a “Service Dog” or serve as a "Psychiatric" Service Dog. Unfortunately, this does not include comfort dogs. Our new office building has a strict policy regarding this issue and we must be respectful of our other patients, some of who have allergies or other issues with dogs in the office.


For purposes of information, below please find the differences between the various categories of these animals.


Service Dog Defined

A "service dog," under California law, is a dog trained to help a specific individual with a disability with services such as fetching dropped items, minimal protection work, rescue work, or pulling a wheelchair. There are two important things to note about the California's definition of service dogs. It is limited to dogs.


It is further limited to dogs that are trained to help individuals with their specific requirements. So, no animal other than a dog can qualify as a service animal, even if that animal is trained to assist a person with a disability. Furthermore, even a dog will not qualify as a service dog if it is not individually trained to help an individual with a disability (in a way that is related to his or her disability).


"Psychiatric" Service Dog Defined

California doesn't have a separate definition for "psychiatric service dog," but a dog that is individually trained to help a person with a mental disability with specific requirements is considered a service dog, and an individual that uses such a dog is entitled to the same rights under the law as someone with a physical disability that uses a service dog.


Examples of work or tasks that a service dog can be trained to perform for someone with a mental disability include:

  • waking someone with clinical depression and coaxing them out of bed at a specified time in the morning;
  • responding to an owner's panic attack by initiating contact to comfort the individual, and
  • alerting a person exercising poor judgment due to bipolar disorder that they are driving dangerously.


Emotional Support Animal Defined

An "emotional support animal" is a dog or other animal that is not trained to perform specific acts directly related to an individual’s disability. Instead, the animal's owner derives a sense of well-being, safety, or calm from the animal’s companionship and presence.


Thank you for your understanding of this policy.

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