The large majority of our care is paid for by Czech public health insurance companies on behalf of our patients. Many of our patients occasionally experience a period when their health insurance is not valid, for instance as a result of changing employment, despite the fact that they hold a health insurance card indicating that they are insured.
These cards unfortunately provide no guarantee for us that your insurance is in fact valid or that we will be paid for our care, i.e. even if you present your health insurance card, if your insurance is not valid then we do not receive payment for the care that we provide you. So instead we must rely on the on-line system provided by the Czech health insurance companies to check the health insurance status of our patients. If this system indicates that you do not have valid Czech public health insurance on the day that you are examined, you have to pay in line with our prices for fee-paying patients. This applies both to our costs and the costs of any laboratory (blood) tests.
We ask for your understanding in our reliance on the on-line system. Whilst it is possible to telephone health insurance companies to get full information on a patient’s insurance status, this can take some time and is not always possible in busy surgery hours or in the evenings. In the event that you dispute the information from the on-line system and we are unable to check by telephone, we will (a) give you a print out of the information from the on-line system, and (b) check by telephone with your health insurance company and get back to you within two working days.
If your status changes retrospectively so that you were in fact insured on the relevant day, or if it turns out that the information we received on-line was inaccurate and we can claim our costs from your Czech public health insurance company, we will return our associated charges promptly and in full, either in cash (in person at the surgery) or by bank transfer to a Czech bank account.
This policy applies only to our costs and to the costs of laboratory examinations where we take your samples. You should assume that any costs of other providers incurred when you do not have valid Czech health insurance (such as for medication or other specialists) will be non-refundable.
We apologise for any inconvenience that this policy causes and thank you for your understanding.
Timothy J. L. Young
Practice Manager