Editorial promise
Editorial policy: how Care Admin Notes is written
What Care Admin Notes covers, where its facts come from, who has the final word, and how corrections are handled.
Updated
Chapter contents
Care Admin Notes explains the paperwork around getting care in the US: referrals, prior authorizations, bills, explanations of benefits, appeals and records requests. This policy describes how those pages are written and what they can and cannot do for you.
The patient’s side of the counter
We cover the administrative side of care as the patient meets it. We do not recommend treatments, rank doctors or tell you which plan to buy. When an answer depends on your own plan, the page says so and lists what to put to the insurer.
How to read the guides
Each guide describes how a process usually works. It cannot know your plan, your state or your situation, and it should not be taken as medical, legal, financial or insurance advice. What your plan covers and what you owe is decided by your plan documents and your insurer. Questions about your health, your treatment or your medicines belong with your doctor or pharmacist.
Rules and where they live
A page that describes a federal rule links to the agency that publishes it. For this site that usually means healthcare.gov and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at cms.gov. State rules and the terms of individual plans can depart from the general picture, and the pages say so when they do.
Dollar amounts and deadlines
Limits, amounts and deadlines change by year, state and plan, so we do not print them as if they applied to everyone. Where a figure matters, the page shows how it is worked out and leaves room for yours. The out-of-pocket estimator is the example, and it is labeled as an estimate.
What we cannot do for you
We cannot look at your claim, call your insurer or tell you whether a particular bill is correct. Nobody here can promise that an appeal will succeed. The guides give you the order of the steps and the questions to put to the people who hold your records, and the people on the phone have the facts of your case.
When care cannot wait
Paperwork should not stand between you and care you need now. If something feels urgent, contact your doctor or local emergency services first. Billing questions and authorizations can usually be sorted out afterward.
Who is credited
Pages carry the name of the Care Admin Notes editors as a group. No named doctor, lawyer or insurer is shown as having reviewed or endorsed a page, and we publish no testimonials and no invented statistics.
What happens to what you type
There are no accounts on the site and no tracking. Anything you enter in the estimator stays in your browser. If you write to us, please leave out your name, your member ID, your diagnoses and any other personal or medical details.
If you spot an error
Resource pages show the day they were published and, after a change, the day they were updated. Write to the editors at hello@careadminnotes.com and name the page and what looks wrong. We compare the point with the primary source and fix the page if it holds.
Terms used across the site
For definitions of the words that recur in these guides, see medical billing terms.