My insurance will cover a breast surgery revision needed. Is it okay to add an additional cosmetic procedure for which I can cash pay, such as lipo?
To add another surgical procedure is possible provided your surgeon agrees and the breast surgery revision is short procedure and both do not exceed 6 hours. You also will have to pay for the time the cosmetic procedure whether it be the hospital or the surgical center.
It is quite ok, however, the insurance company is not going to pay for the operating room time, hospital or anesthesia and if done in the hospital you could end up paying a lot more than if done in the surgeon's own surgery center where cosmetic operations are usually done. This is a question that you need to ask your own plastic surgeon that would do the breast revision and no one else.
Yes! This is commonly done. What we do is completely separate that times on the operative reports or the insurance portions as well as the cosmetic portion so that we keep with ethical billing practices to insurance for the covered portion of the procedure and the self pay/cash/cosmetic rate for the portions of the procedure which are considered cosmetic and not covered by insurance. Please speak with your surgeon about this so that you get a break down of fees for each.
best wishes