Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the Virtual Assistant?
It’s an automated system designed to answer phone calls, schedule appointments, and provide quick responses to common questions. You also have the ability to leave a non-urgent messages using our Virtual Assistant. The system can also assist with refill requests, specialist referrals, and more.

2. Will I still be able to speak with a live person?
Absolutely. You can always request to speak with a staff member during regular business hours. But we strongly encourage you to use Aimee for routine requests. We want to give you more options and better access, without long hold times on the phone.

3.  What happens if I mention something urgent with my symptoms or reason for my call?

Our Virtual Assistant is designed to prioritize your safety. If you say something that sounds urgent—like chest pain, severe abdominal pain, bleeding, or other potentially emergent symptoms—the system will immediately transfer your call to our care team.

It’s a smart listener that knows when your health needs human attention, fast.

4. Is my personal health information safe?
Yes. The Virtual Assistant is fully HIPAA-compliant and follows strict data security protocols to protect your privacy.

5. Can I use the Virtual Assistant to cancel or reschedule appointments?
Yes!  This is easy task that can be done anytime---day or night!

6. What if the Virtual Assistant doesn’t understand my request?
No worries—if the system can’t help, it will transfer you to a team member who can during normal business hours (Monday - Friday 8am to 5pm excluding holidays).

7. Will the Virtual Assistant be available after hours?
Yes, Aimee can assist you, even when the office is closed!  Just call our office at (410) 897-9841 and select option 3.  She can schedule, reschedule and cancel appointments, take medication refill requests and more.  If she is unable to assist, you will need to call back during normal business hours.

8. Can I ask medical questions?
The Virtual Assistant will not provide medical advice but it can help with getting your issue directed to the right person in our office or schedule a visit with your provider.

9.  Aimee asked me if I wanted to schedule a "referral appointment".  What does that mean?

We are aware of this and have engineers working on fixing the problem.  This is happening because your provider has put a message in your chart, requesting that you schedule a wellness/annual physical or follow-up appointment.  Aimee is referring to the appointment type as a referral rather than the correct name for the appointment. We hope to have this fixed shortly.

We have a handy guidebook here to help you with registering for a Patient Portal account.  You will need Adobe in order to view/print the guidebook.

This response is current as of September 4th, 2025

COVID-19 vaccines are recommended for all adults, unless there is a specific medical reason not to receive the vaccine, such as a history of severe allergic reaction to a vaccine component or a previous episode of myocarditis or pericarditis after a COVID-19 vaccine dose.

Why is the COVID-19 vaccine recommended?

• COVID-19 can cause serious illness, hospitalization, and death, especially in older adults and people with certain medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, chronic kidney or liver disease, immune system problems, or autoimmune diseases.

• The risk of severe COVID-19 increases with age. For example, adults over 75 years have a much higher risk of hospitalization and death compared to younger adults.

• People with multiple medical conditions are at even higher risk for severe COVID-19 complications.

• Vaccination greatly reduces the risk of severe illness, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19, including from newer variants.

Which vaccine and schedule should be used?

• The CDC recommends using the vaccine that matches the patient's age and health status. For most adults, this means an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna).

• For adults 65 years and older, updated bivalent vaccines provide better protection against current variants and are shown to reduce hospitalizations by over 70% compared to older vaccines.

• People with weakened immune systems, cancer, HIV, or chronic inflammatory diseases should receive COVID-19 vaccination, as they are at higher risk for severe disease.

Is the vaccine safe?

• COVID-19 vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in adults. Serious side effects are rare, and the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, even for those with underlying health conditions.

• Some rare side effects, such as myocarditis (heart inflammation) or severe allergic reactions, have been reported. If there is a history of these conditions after a previous COVID-19 vaccine dose, discuss this with a healthcare provider before getting vaccinated.

What if I have already had COVID-19?

• Even if you have had COVID-19 before, vaccination is still recommended to help protect against future infection and severe disease.

Next steps

If there are questions about specific health conditions, medications, or which vaccine is best, please schedule an appointment with a primary care provider. They can help make the best decision for individual health.

If you've had Medicare Part B for longer than twelve (12) months, you can have an "Annual Wellness Visit" to develop or update your personalized plan to help prevent disease based on your health and current risk factors.  If your provider performs additional tests or services, there may be a co-insurance for those services.  More information about Annual Wellness Visit coverage can be found here: https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/yearly-wellness-visits

It is very important to understand that a "Wellness Visit" is NOT an "annual physical", which Medicare does not cover.  The purposes of a Wellness Visit is to focus on preventive care and long-term health planning.

A Wellness Visit includes:

• Review of medical and family history
• List of current providers and prescriptions
• Measurements: height, weight, blood pressure, BMI
• Cognitive assessment (e.g., memory screening)
• Health risk assessment (HRA)
• Creation or update of a personalized prevention plan
• Schedule for future screenings and immunizations

It DOES NOT include:

• Hands-on physical exam 
• Lab tests or diagnostic screenings
• Evaluation of new or existing symptoms

This visit is more about staying well than diagnosing illness. Think of it as a strategic check-in to help patients remain independent and healthy.  If a new condition or exacerbation of a chronic illness is addressed at the visit, the provider will charge separately for that service.
 

No. You must be assessed before any antibiotics will be prescribed by our practitioners. Please call our office at 410-897-9841 and select option 3 to schedule.

It generally takes two (2) business days for a referral to be completed.  Please be advised that if you have not been seen in our office for more than six (6) months or the condition you are consulting the specialist for is new, we may require an office visit before issuing a referral. Our referral specialist can be reached by calling the office at (410) 897-9841 and selecting option 3.  Our virtual assistant, Aimee, will assist you.  You can say phrases such as "I need a referral" or "I have a referral request", and she will transfer you to the referral department.

We do our very best to prescribe medications that are on your insurance company's preferred drug list, aka, "formulary", however, there are times when a prior authorization form is needed. It's important to know that it can take several days from the time you request the form to the time it is either approved or denied by your insurance company because of the multiple steps required in between. While we do our best to complete and return the required forms within two (2) business days, it can take another three (3) business days for the form to be reviewed, and a decision made, by your insurance company. Therefore, we ask that you keep this time frame in mind when a medication we've prescribed requires a prior authorization. 

First and foremost, if your message is urgent, or needs an immediate response, DO NOT submit it online.  In such cases, please call our office at (410) 897-9841 and speak with one of our telephone operators so that your message can be triaged appropriately.  If your call is life-threatening, please go to your nearest Emergency Room or dial 9-1-1 immediately.  If you have a routine question for our physicians and/or office staff, you will generally receive a response in 1-3 business days.  If you do not receive a response after three business days, please call our office to check the status of your message as we may have the wrong contact information for you. It is important that you keep your contact information current, so please verify that your phone/email/mailing address is up-to-date at all times.  Please DO NOT make multiple requests or send multiple messages for the the same subject or item.  This can create an even longer delay in addressing your request.

The easiest way to get a copy of a lab slip or order is to log in to your Patient Portal.  Click on the "My Health" link on the left side of the page, then click "Health Reminders" on the toolbar display.  Any pending lab orders would be there and are printable for your convenience.  

*** Please note you must click on each order, then click on the print button.*** 

There are several ways to submit your request, and depending on the route you choose, this can affect the turn-around time for processing.  We highly recommend that you call your pharmacy to request your prescription refill.  They will send us the request electronically, and our providers are able to process these requests the most quickly.  We do not call or email patients to confirm that your prescription has been sent. If you are signed up for text alerts, our system will send a text message to patient's who have authorized this form of communication.  The text alert with come from RxInform.org. Unless you receive a phone call or message from us, you can assume the refill was authorized and can check with your pharmacy to confirm. In general, you can expect your refills to be done within two (2) business days, but can take longer, especially if the office was closed for a holiday.  You may also speak to our virtual agent, Aimee, to request a refill, or speak to one of our phone operators to request your refill, but these requests take longer to process. Please allow 2-3 business days for processing these requests.  If your medication requires Prior Authorization (PA), the amount of time to process can be extended significantly.  Please plan accordingly. (Scheduled drugs, such as Percocet, Oxycodone, etc. are handled differently and are addressed in the next section.) 

Patients on long-term chronic pain medications must be seen in the office regularly (usually every other month), and must sign our Opioid Use Contract.  Patients must also have regular urine drug screenings. Failure to keep your follow-up appointments or refusing urine drug screens will result in immediate discontinuation issuing prescriptions.  Please keep in mind that refills will not be given early, nor will they replaced if the medication is lost or stolen. When picking up your prescriptions, please be prepared to show a picture ID. If you are having a friend or family member pick up a prescription for you, they must also show identification before the prescriptions will be released.  On months that you are not required to have an office visit, please allow two to three business days for opioid medication refill requests to be processed. Please plan your request accordingly. 

Medicare has excellent patient education materials that outline the TCM coding. Please use the link to open their Patient Education site:  https://www.cms.gov/files/document/mln908628-transitional-care-management-services.pdf

This is a Medicare code effective January 1st, 2024, and is designed to address the complexity inherent to in-office and outpatient evaluation and management (E/M) services.  This code was originally set to go into effect in 2021, however, Congress delayed it's implementation.  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) services  states, "a primary care clinician, as the continuing focal point for all needed health care services for a patient, often bears the cognitive load, responsibility, and an accountability for building the most effective, trusting relationship possible amidst evaluating and managing other health care problems during a visit. Building an effective longitudinal relationship, in and of itself, is a key aspect of providing reasonable and necessary medical care and will make the patient more likely to comply with treatment recommendations after the visit and during future visits. It’s the work building this important relationship between the practitioner and patient for primary and longitudinal care that has been previously unrecognized and unaccounted for during evaluation and management visits". 

There are a few reasons why an office visit may have been billed in addition to your physical. The most frequent reason is because a new condition or illness was treated in addition to the physical that was scheduled. For example, you are scheduled for your annual physical, but you also have a new rash on your arm that just appeared in the past couple of days.  The provider performs the physical, but he/she also evaluates the rash and treats it. Because treating that new rash is outside of what the provider would normally treat during a physical, there will be an office visit billed as well.  Depending on your insurance policy, you may be charged an office visit copay for the additional service performed.  Should you have additional questions, please contact our Billing Department Staff at (410) 897-9841 and selecting option 3.  When the virtual agent asks how to help you, simply say "Billing Department".

Please be advised that patients scheduled or seen before 8:00am or after 5:00pm Monday through Friday, as well as on weekends and Federal holidays, are charged an "after-hours" code, as allowed under the standard Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) definitions published by the American Medical Association (AMA). Many insurers will cover the cost, but there are some that do not. If you wish to verify your coverage, please call the Member Services number on your insurance card and inquire if they cover CPT code 99051 under your plan.  

We partner with several companies that offer essential services, and Iris is one of those companies.  They provide Advanced Care Planning services which are extremely important conversations to have.  It benefits individuals and their loved ones by allowing patients to express their wishes for future medical care, ensuring their choices are heard and respected, when they can no longer make those decisions for themselves.

We participate with most major insurance carriers, such as Medicare, Aetna, CareFirst BC/BS, and CIGNA.  For up-to-date information, we always recommend you call the Member Services number on your insurance card to verify that we are "in-network" for your plan.  You may need to give them our Tax ID number to verify our participation status. Our Tax ID is 52-2128322.  While not all of our providers participate with traditional Medicaid (the red and white card), we do accept the Managed Care Organization plans with Priority Partners and Wellpoint (formerly Amerigroup).  We will accept Workers' Compensation as long as the claim has been filed by the employer and there is a valid Claim Number assigned. We will also need the Claim Adjuster's name and telephone number, along with your employer's information.  We DO NOT accept Personal Injury Protection, otherwise known as PIP, for automobile accident claims.  You will be required to pay for the visit in full at the time of service, and we will issue you a receipt that you can submit to your auto insurance carrier.  For patients without insurance, we do offer a discount if the visit is paid for at the time of service. Please speak to our Billing Department staff for details regarding this discount. We also accept all major credit cards. 

The billing specialists can be reached at (410) 897-9841 and then selecting option 3. When the virtual assistant asks the reason for your call, you can use words or phrases like "I have a question about my bill" or "I need to speak to the  Billing Department" and your call will be transferred.  

Yes, we offer a discount for services to patients without insurance, if the services are paid at the time service(s) are rendered. You can view a list of our fees here.

Yes, there is typically a charge to have forms completed, which is outlined on our financial policy.  The current fees, as of May 2024, are listed below:

• Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) form for parking permit - $30
• Family Medical Leave (FMLA) form - $40
• Childcare Clearance Form - $20
• Other forms such as college entrance, disability, etc - $30