For Patients

Office Hours

For information or to schedule an appointment, please call us at {tel}.

• Monday thru Friday: 9AM to 5PM

Patient Forms

Altos Eye Physicians provides our patients with office forms for your convenience. We recommend you print and fill these forms prior to your appointment to save time.

• Patient Registration
• Dr. Chang's Welcome Packet

Appointments / Cancellations

Call us at 650-948-9123 to schedule an appointment.

With the exception of serious emergencies, it is expected that you keep all of your appointments. If you need to reschedule an appointment we require 24 hours notice. In such a case, please call our office and arrange for a make-up appointment with one of our patient care coordinators. A fee may be charged if appointments are broken repeatedly. A fee may be charged if appointments are cancelled with less than 24hrs notice. Your time is valuable and we make every effort to stay on schedule. However, because we are a medical office we often deal with complicated eye problems and unscheduled emergencies, as a result, unavoidable delays sometimes occur. We ask for your patience and hope that you find reassurance knowing that you would receive the same full attention in a similar situation.

Emergencies

If life threatening please call 911. During office hours please call {tel}. After hours / weekends — please call our office and the answering service will contact us or another local ophthalmologists with whom we share continuous 24 hour, 7 days a week on-call coverage.

Insurance and Billing

• General Information
  • Please bring your insurance card with you.
  • Standard health insurance plans including Medicare, pay toward diagnostic eye exams for medical problems.
  • Refractions, or “routine” eye exams, are usually not covered by medical insurance because they are deemed “not medically necessary” by the plans.
  • Vision plans are separate policies that cover routine eye exams, refractions for glasses and the cost of eyeglasses and contact lenses. In turn, vision plans do not cover diagnosis or treatment of medical eye problems.
  • We are Preferred Providers with many PPO’s (preferred provider organizations), EPO’s (exclusive provider organizations), HMO’s (health maintenance organizations), as well as with the vision plan VSP (Vision Service Plan).  Please check with your specific plan.
  • Most HMO’s require that you obtain a written authorization each time you see a specialist, such as an ophthalmologist. The authorization must be obtained in advance-usually through your primary care physician’s office.
• Vision Service Plan (VSP)
  • We are preferred providers for VSP as is our Optical Shop
• Medicare
  • We accept Medicare patients.
  • We do not accept Medicare assignment.
  • We will submit claims for any covered services for you, and send you a billing statement. Medicare will reimburse you directly once you have met the deductible.  The "Explanation of Benefits" that Medicare provides you will enable you to bill any secondary insurance in case Medicare does not forward your claim directly.
• Co-pays
  • We ask that you pay your co-pay at the time of your office visit as well as payment for any non-covered services.
• Billing Policy
  • We are preferred providers with many insurance plans — please check with your insurance plan.
  • If you have a plan in which we are preferred providers our office will bill you only as directed by your insurance.
  • For those  patients without insurance coverage or for non-covered services, full payment at the time of your visit is required. For your convenience we accept cash, Visa, MasterCard, and personal check.
  • Your insurance plan is a contract between you and your health insurance company. It is necessary for you to know the specific details of your own plan, as such it is your responsibility to know your benefits and the limits of your coverage before scheduling an appointment.

We are always glad to assist you with any billing questions. You may reach our Billing Department at (650) 948- 6506.