Money-Saving Ideas: HSA/FSA Accounts – Strategy #2/5

Idea number two is health savings accounts and flexible spending accounts. These are a great way to save your healthcare dollars. The way this works with Sentinel Primary Care is going to vary a little bit depending on your particular plan, and it’s going to vary from one plan to another. Essentially, the way that our experience has been is that for some folks, their HSA or FSA plan has deemed the entire membership fee of Sentinel Primary Care to be a valid expense that you can use your HSA or FSA dollars for. Some of the plans have said that for the dollar value of the healthcare that you receive, you can use your HSA or FSA dollars for it.

So what does that part mean? Well, it means that if a person has a $100-a-month membership fee to be a member at Sentinel Primary Care and they come in to see me for a sprained ankle, in a typical insurance-based practice, the bill to insurance would have been 125 bucks. In that case, the HSA or FSA has said to the person, you can use 125 of your HSA or FSA dollars toward Sentinel. Then the person comes in to see me later for an annual physical and let’s say the bill in an insurance-based practice would have been 250 dollars. Then the plan will say, you can use 250 of your HSA or FSA dollars toward Sentinel Primary Care.

So depending on your plan, potentially the entire membership can be used from your plan or the dollar value of the amount of care that you receive on a visit-by-visit basis can be used from the plan. That’s a great way to save a good chunk of money on the membership cost at Sentinel Primary Care. That is definitely something to look into, especially during open enrollment season when people get to pick the amount of money that they’re going to put into an HSA or FSA plan.

For several additional health-saving ideas, take a look at the other videos at sentinelprimarycare.com.