Of course, no one likes to be surprised with unexpected costs after surgery. To avoid this, OPA’s pre-certification staff goes to great lengths to contact your insurance to understand your benefits and determine if your surgery requires pre-authorization. Our staff then attempts to obtain the necessary prior authorization for you; if we are unable to do so, we will contact you. We will then prepare a financial estimate for your surgery and our financial counselors will either meet with you or call you to discuss the costs prior to surgery. Our estimate, including the patient portion, is only an estimate as some insurance companies will not disclose patient benefit information to providers. For this and other reasons we encourage our patients to also contact their insurance company if they have specific benefit questions. The actual charges may be more or less than our estimated amount. Complications or special needs that arise during surgery can sometimes increase the amount. In such instances the actual patient liability cannot be determined until after the surgery. We try to do our best to give our patients a meaningful estimate before surgery.