How to make your claim go smoothly and minimize cost to you.
Understand your coverage
Notify your insurance company that you are hurt as soon as possible
Get a prescription for massage from your doctor or urgent care (Must be a MD or a DO)
Send Application for PIP benefits to your insurance company.
Get plenty of rest and go to all prescribed treatment.
Schedule follow up appointment with doctor to avoid lapse in treatment.
Track medical costs yourself to make sure you do not exceed PIP coverage
Understand your coverage
Massage at Big Island Massage Network is NOT covered by your health insurance. Therefore you need to make sure that your car insurance is going to cover it; otherwise, you will end up with a bill.
Car insurance policies in the state of Hawai´i usually include $10,000 for medical treatment for each person injured in an accident no matter who is at fault. This is called your Personal Injury Protection plan or PIP. If the fund has not been used up by an ambulance ride, ER vist, X rays, MRI, CT Scans, then the remainder can be used for massage.
While your PIP covers massage, your regular medical insurance will not. So you need to track your PIP to make sure you don’t go over. (See below)
Some policies have a separate deductible for the PIP, and some have a co-pay. We will call your insurance company to find out if this applies to you before we begin treatment.
According to Hawai’i state law, your prescription needs to be from a medical doctor (MD or DO). Many insurance companies will not accept a prescription from a nurse practitioner (APRN or DNP) or a naturopathic doctor (ND). If that is what you have, we can inquire whether it will be acceptable.
Under the PIP, massage is not considered “alternative” medicine and is not subject to the same limit on # of sessions that applies to chiropractic and acupuncture.
Send forms to your insurance company
They will usually send you a form called an “Application for PIP Benefits”. Fill it out and send it back to them as soon as possible. If they do not receive this form, they will not pay for the bills, and you will be responsible for them.
Track the PIP balance yourself
If you are just getting one or two courses of massage along with chiropractic adjustments, there should be plenty of money to cover it, but when you add in an ambulance ride, ER Visit, MRI, CT Scans, then you need to start keeping tabs
Hospitals can take months to submit their bills and insurance companies are allowed 30 days to process them. This means that when the adjuster tells you the balance of your PIP the number probably doesn’t reflect all the services you have received. If the ER, Ambulance, or radiology bill have not come in yet the balance can be way off. The only way to truly know how much is available is to track the expenses yourself. To that end, we can give you a total of all the bills we’ve submitted and which ones have been paid at any time.