New Clients

Intake Information

After making your appointment over the phone, you will receive an email with an invitation to join our patient portal, ChARM. Once logged in, you must complete a series of online questionnaires that provide us with the necessary information for billing and for nutrition counseling. These questionnaires will take 45-60 minutes to complete. You can start filling them out and save them to finish at any point. You must submit the questionnaires at least two full business days before your first visit. If you have any questions about these questionnaires, please contact us at 206-853-0534.

• Effective August 1st: SN Welcome Letter + Fee Schedule August 2024

Insurance & Pricing Information

The providers at Starkel Nutrition are credentialed with multiple health insurance carriers (please see below), many of which cover medical nutrition therapy or preventative services in nutrition. Each insurance company has many different plans, which may or may not cover nutrition counseling and surveillance. It is your responsibility to know the details of your plan, including whether the plan covers our providers for nutrition, nutritional counseling, dietary surveillance, or naturopathic services under preventative services.

Please consult with your individual insurance policy to verify your coverage so that you are aware of your responsibilities.

As a courtesy to you, we will bill your insurance company for services at our clinic. You will be responsible for any co-pays due at the time of service, and you will be billed later for remaining balances for deductibles or coinsurance, or visit fees (if your insurance didn’t cover the visit).

Here are some general questions you may want to ask your insurance carrier in order to determine your coverage (ensure you collect the customer service representative’s ID/badge number, record the date and time of your call as a way to refer back to your insurance for any billing questions):

• Do I have insurance coverage for nutrition, nutritional counseling, medical nutrition therapy, or dietary surveillance under preventative services?
• What is my Out-of-Network and In-Network coverage? Is the clinic, Starkel Nutrition, In-Network?
• Do I need a PCP (Primary Care Physician) referral or pre-authorization to schedule appointments?
• Do only certain diagnoses qualify for nutrition counseling coverage? If so, which diagnoses qualify?
• Do I have a deductible to cover?  If so, how much? Do I need to fulfill the deductible before my insurance will begin covering sessions?
• How many nutrition sessions do I get per year or per lifetime?
• Do I have a co-pay/coinsurance?  If so, how much per visit?

At Starkel Nutrition we believe that everyone should have access to our services regardless of insurance coverage. We offer discounted out-of-pocket rates and various packages (which further reduce the rate per session) for clients without insurance coverage.

• Effective August 1st: SN Welcome Letter + Fee Schedule August 2024

Starkel Nutrition is credentialed with the following insurance companies. Each plan under these carriers may have different coverage for nutrition, always check with your insurance provider for specific benefits and coverage.

• Blue Cross Blue Shield
• Regence Blue Shield
• Uniform
• Bridgespan
• Aetna (select providers)
• Kaiser Permanente: Access PPO, Options PPO, or Omni PPO
• First Choice (some plans)
• Cigna (some plans)
• Premera Blue Cross
• LifeWise

Cancellation/No-Show Policy

We have a 48-hour cancellation policy (or 2 business days; our business days are Monday through Friday), with a $175 late cancellation fee, which cannot be billed to insurance. We try to refill canceled spots so that we can accommodate all clients waiting to see us. Thank you for helping us do this.

To illustrate this: if your appointment is on Monday at 2 pm, we need to hear from you by Thursday at 2 pm to avoid the late cancellation charge.

Please let us know as soon as possible if you need to reschedule an appointment. The easiest way to reschedule is to go into your ChARM profile, cancel your current appointment and then reschedule a new one. This option is only available for appointments two days or more out. If you are canceling within two days of your appointment, or do not want to use the online scheduling tool, please call the office.

Medicare/Medicaid and United Health Care

At this time, we do not accept Medicare or Medicaid as they do not have adequate coverage for nutrition, even if you have secondary insurance with one of the insurance providers noted above. Specifically, they only cover RDNs and not CNs, but more importantly, they only cover nutrition services for Diabetes and End-Stage Renal Disease.

In addition, we do not accept United Health Care as we are considered out-of-network, which means the visit is rarely covered. We can provide you with a Superbill that you can submit for possible reimbursement by Medicare, Medicaid, and/or United Health Care.

Non-insurance Clients

We offer discounted out-of-pocket rates and various packages (which further reduce the rate per session) for clients without insurance coverage. See our fee schedule for package pricing.