Sage Medicine Office FAQs

A: The Personal Heath Care (PHC) fee that is due every year is not an all-access pass to Dr. Cawley. This fee serves as more of a “membership fee” and allows you to continue to enjoy the benefits and perks of being a patient of Dr. Cawley. We reserve same day appointments for acute (sick) and emergent patients. This is part of the model to make sure we can give all our patients the best care possible while trying to cut down on wait times. Every day is different, and we do our best to accommodate everyone accordingly.

A: The majority of specialist offices prefer or even require a recent visit from the referring provider. This also gives us the opportunity to order and send lab work or imaging with your referral to help smooth out the process.

A: Similar to the above reasoning. Dr. Cawley also prefers to evaluate your pain or chief complaint to make sure she orders all necessary imaging on all necessary areas. If asking for MRIs, insurance often requires prior authorization, and this may not be an approved service if you do not have a recent visit and plain x-rays.

A: Dr. Cawley is much more thorough (as I am sure most of you are now aware) than most other physicians. She will ALWAYS want to review your current health status prior to ANY procedure. She takes into account long-term medications and co-morbidities that may have not been discussed with your surgeon and gives more detailed pre and post operative instructions considering the entirety of your patient-physician relationship. We recently had a patient come in for a pre-op that the surgeon’s office was so adamant about the patient not needing to see Dr. Cawley for clearance that they refused to fax us the orders. After a lengthy visit and discussions of prior imaging and lab work, it came to light that the patient did not actually need to have the surgery! They had been misdiagnosed by a nurse practitioner in the specialist’s practice. Dr. Cawley has preferences for certain surgeons and will also let you know if she thinks there is a better fit for your particular issue. Dr. Cawley also feels more comfortable being able to give her blessing for procedures to her patients in person.

A: Due to the amount of time it takes to properly fill out the questions and carefully consider the answers, it is necessary that you sit with Dr. Cawley face to face to make sure we get everything answered correctly. This will also expedite the paperwork process for you and hopefully keep you from having to make corrections to the paperwork and resubmit. You will be asked to fill out the paperwork in pencil while you wait for Dr. Cawley so she can have an idea of what accommodation(s) you are needing when she visits with you.

A: All services rendered by our office will be billed to your insurance or you if there is ultimately patient responsibility. COVID treatments, weekend, and after-hours treatments by Dr. Cawley and additional services such as home health management are all billable services.

A: Susie does not answer phone calls from our patients. The phone in her office is for clocking in and out. If you have questions about an invoice from Quest, please call their billing department. The number is located on your invoice. If you have a question about trying to get a test covered that was denied, please send a copy of your invoice to Cindy or Cj. You can mail, fax (210-510-2135) or email ([email protected]) the invoice and we will be happy to see if there is anything else we can do to get coverage. Please be aware there are circumstances beyond our control that may prevent us from changing the patient responsibility.

A: Susie has been a wonderful addition to our office, and we enjoy having her here so much that it is easy to forget that she is not an actual employee of Sage. She is a Quest employee and therefore must answer to Quest and is accountable for their policies and guidelines. She is obligated to not work over so many hours a week and is required to take a 1-hour lunch daily. If she is not on the clock, she cannot legally draw labs.

A: It is best for the flow of our practice to have you leave messages with the appropriate person and/or on the appropriate person’s voicemail to ensure that all inquiries are handled promptly in the order they were received. There are always going to be exceptions and we will do our best to expedite anything that is emergent and needs to be triaged. Refills and routine questions will need to be routed appropriately to help us take care of as many patients as possible in a timely manner. Routine refills and non-emergent messages left after 3pm may be answered or completed next business day. If you have not heard back after 24 hours, please call back to speak with Kourtnie as your message was not relayed to her. Remember to check with your pharmacy to see if they received your refill before calling Kourtnie back as she does not call all refill requests back to the patient. If there is a pressing matter or question, we will get back to you by the end of our workday. Sometimes this is later than 5pm.

You remain under the care of a physician that goes above and beyond for her patients. Dr. Cawley is very thorough and willing to perform services in the office that most other primary care physicians refer out for:

• EKGs
• Simple dermatology (skin) procedures
• Trigger point injections for muscles
• Bursae injections for joints
• Pap smears
• Prostate exams
• Tilt testing
• Slums testing
• Home sleep testing
• Food sensitivity testing
• Libre monitor demonstrations and readings if requested.

Dr. Cawley participates in continuing education every year to stay as current and knowledgeable as possible.

Dr. Cawley is passionate about every patient staying up to date on preventative medicine. She has diagnosed many early-stage cancers by having patients come in for physical / annual wellness visits.

Dr. Cawley actually listens and cares about each and every one of you. This can cause her to run behind in clinic, however, she wants to make sure all your issues are addressed. Sometimes she will ask you to make another appointment to discuss additional issues. Please understand it is because she wants to make sure you are heard.

Dr. Cawley offers supplements for purchase in her office. Many of these supplements are available online as well. Sage Medicine sells most, if not all, of these supplements for less than online and does not make profits. Dr. Cawley would rather make these supplements affordable and readily available to her patients than make a profit.

You will be able to speak to someone nine times out of ten when you call. Voicemails are checked multiple times a day. The more detailed you are in the message, the easier it is for us to get an answer to call you back with. If not, we will have to call you to get more information, then speak to Dr. Cawley after the clinic, then call you back.

Kourtnie does her best to get as many prior authorizations for medications approved as she can. There are many offices that do not attempt prior authorizations. Please be patient and give at least 7-10 business days for her to attempt to process them. Please also check with your pharmacy before calling us to follow up on the approval.

If you have outstanding lab orders that were refused at one point or not drawn for whatever reason at Quest, every quarter or so Quest may send out email notifications that you have outstanding lab orders. Please do not get these labs drawn if you were not expecting to need labs for an upcoming appointment.

If you look on your portal for appointment confirmations, you may see your lab reminder under appointments. This is NOT an appointment made for you to our Quest or any other laboratory. These are placed in our system ONLY to send out reminders for you to have your labs drawn two weeks prior to your appointment. We apologize if this seems confusing, however, there is not another way for us to enter your labs and send automated reminders.