Can you get the DCPI numbers ? <| sep |> I worked for a medical billing company that had a decent share of shady clients that did some questionable things before we discontinued services with them . Here ' s some of what I ' ve learned If the paperwork they give you is disorganized or rambling on and on , then you shouldn ' t be seeing that doctor . We had one physician who worked alone , and had a FULL PAGE explaining just her cancellation policy three paragraphs , for what amounted to being a terrible policy of 48 hours notice explaining why early notice was important and why you ' d be charged if you didn ' t follow it . None of that is necessary nobody is going to remember it . Organized paperwork usually means an organized doc if they can ' t even get their paperwork straight , move on . This includes offices that can ' t be bothered to keep an original copy of their paperwork and will instead give you forms that are so dark after hundreds of copies that you can ' t read what they ' re asking for in each field . In relation to the above , make sure you read the cancellation policy . A lot of doctors will charge you if you flake on an appointment . They also sometimes detail late fees and other charges associated with nonpayment , though if they use a billing service , you might not see anything about it until you get a bill . Some of these policies are absurd , and you need to know about that ahead of time . Put your SSN on the paperwork . Yes , your social will be in the records but having it is extremely helpful if the billing office needs to verify your insurance ID number . If something doesn ' t get written down correctly or isn ' t photocopied clearly , sometimes just having that social is enough for them to find your right info if they know who your carrier is . That saves them time , and potentially saves them from having to send you a bill to get your attention if they try to call you and you don ' t call them back . After the appointment ? If you have insurance , don ' t pay anything until you get something from your insurance carrier . I ' ve seen a lot of offices send out bills for services dated after the insurance notice for the full amount , and claim they crossed in the mail and that the payment has since been applied and the bill is invalid when calling to inquire about it and these are just bills that I received for my own personal care from the limited number of doctors that I ' ve seen recently . One of the providers that I billed for collected illegally a lower selfpay payment up front and then billed insurance if insurance paid it , she ' d refund the patient , and if not , she ' d consider it self pay and write off the extra . This is illegal for so very many reasons , but I won ' t go into all of that here long story short , those ' refunds ' often didn ' t make it to the patient after the insurance company paid , and in many cases we had to harass her for months before she ' d say she sent the refund but never provided proof of refund . If you make a payment agreement , make sure you get it in writing especially if you made it with the provider , and not their billing service . A lot of billers will send things straight to collections if it isn ' t paid in full within a certain amount of time because they don ' t receive documentation of the payment agreement , they don ' t review each case before sending to collections , or they simply don ' t care .