Your First Visit

We want your first visit at our clinic to be a life-giving and life-changing experience. Your first visit will be an hour long, including a comprehensive examination and treatment. No matter which provider you’re seeing, our goal is the same: to empower you towards a healthy and active life. Please help us serve you better by letting us know ahead of time if there’s anything specific we can do to meet your needs. We will do everything we can to ensure you have the best possible experience!

Insurance Information

Elite Spine and Sports wants to help get you feeling better, faster. Our providers participate in many insurance programs, but please call us if you have any questions about whether you can use your insurance to pay for your visit. For patients who have little or no chiropractic insurance coverage, flexible payment programs can be arranged. Click here to view a list of accepted insurance plans.

You can also use the following at our office:

  • Flexible Spending Accounts
  • Workers Compensation
  • Auto Insurance – Auto Accident

Most insurance plans are accepted at our office. Because there are so many insurance plans out there, and because coverage for chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage varies widely, please call us to find out if your plan covers care in our office. Before your first appointment, our staff would be happy to verify your benefits and explain them to you at no charge. We also accept auto accident, workers compensation, and personal injury cases that have resulted in back pain, neck pain, headaches, or other related pain conditions.

No Insurance?

Please call to inquire about our ESS Elective Care Plan.

Need Help Understanding Your Bill or Insurance?

Check out our Insurance and Billing FAQ below. Still need help? Contact our Billing Specialist, Aliese Schaefer at 503-610-0649.

Insurance and Billing FAQ

  • Aetna (Dr. Simele & Michelle Stobbe, L.Ac. only)
  • All Savers (United Healthcare Network)
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield, Blue Card, Regence BCBS, Anthem Blue Card (nationwide)
  • First Choice
  • Kaiser Permanente/CHP (except massage)
  • Moda
    • Medicare
    • Beacon
    • Connexus
    • Alternative Care City of Portland
    • OHSU PPO (except massage therapy)
    • Community Care
    • Tuality Health Networks.
  • Multiplan/PHCS
  • Pacific Source
    • Legacy Plus
    • Preferred PSN
    • SmartHealth Tier 1/Smart Choice
    • Voyager Networks
  • Providence
  • Summit Health Plan – Medicare Advantage
  • UMR
  • United Healthcare
  • UHC Medicare Advantage (AARP) (nationwide)

When we collect payment at our office, it’s based on the information we have from your insurance company at the time we verified benefits, and we are generally collecting an estimate. After we’ve billed your insurance, you’ll receive an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) that outlines what we charged, your network discount, and the amount you owe. Sometimes that includes a deductible that you owe before your insurance will pay for that particular service. Balances on account are generally the difference between the estimated copay/coinsurance/deductible collected at the time you receive the service and the actual copay/coinsurance/deductible charged by your insurance after they’ve processed a claim we’ve submitted to them.

A deductible is the amount you have to pay for certain medical services before your insurance will pay for those services. For example, if you have a $1000 deductible for chiropractic, acupuncture, and/or massage services, you pay the “allowed amount” that is the in-network rate your insurance allows for those services until you’ve reached that $1000 threshold. Once you’ve paid that amount for services, they will pay their share after your coinsurance or copay.

No it’s not a bill, it’s an Explanation of Benefits. Once we’ve submitted a claim to your insurance and they’ve processed the claim, the EOB is either mailed or emailed to you and explains the following:

  • Charges: this is the amount we charge for services
  • Description or CPT Code: this is the official code or name of the service(s) we provide when you receive care at ESS
  • Allowed Amount: (also called “network discount”) that we have agreed to accept in order to be in-network with your insurance
  • Provider discount: this is the amount we write off or “discount” from our full charges. It is the difference between our full charges and the allowed amount
  • Your responsibility: this is the amount you owe ESS and may be categorized as deductible, copay, and/or coinsurance
  • Payment: this is the amount your insurance paid ESS

Here are some great resources from commonly-used insurance plans to better understand your EOB:

Our Chiropractors do more than just a quick adjustment to your neck; most of their work entails muscle manipulation, stretching, laser therapy, Graston, cupping and more. Chiropractic adjustments are the only portion of your care that fall under the chiropractic benefit on most plans. Everything else the doctor does when you’re in the office falls under Physical Therapy. This is not our decision, and is decided by your insurance and how they interpret the codes we bill.

For our ESS Elective Care Plan, which is a time-of-service discount plan for elective care, you must pay at the time of service to receive that discount. If you cannot pay at the time of service, you would be charged the full amount for services and can set up an automatic payment with our Billing Manager.

For Insurance patients: we are required to collect copays at the time of service, and generally attempt to collect estimated coinsurance and deductibles as well to prevent our patients getting into debt with us. However, if you have challenges paying for your care, please contact our Billing Manager to make arrangements.