Dear Patients,
First of all, thank you for trusting JSR Health for your care!
You are the reason I wanted to be who I am today.
Raised by extremely kind parents, I imbibed their values and respected my elders and had a caring attitude towards the young and peers. I picked up after my parents' passion to help people by becoming a doctor.
Fortunately enough, I was able to land on the opportunities to fulfill my dream. The path crossed one of the most reputed medical college, public health institution, residency programs. I found amazing mentors, teachers, friends, students and patients on the way who enhanced my learning experience at every step.
Every time I opened the book to learn about the human body, I would be awestruck by this amazing work of nature. It just simply seems impossible that so many fine details go into making simple things happen. Looking at how nicely and thoughtfully the bones and joints and muscles are laid, how amazingly the nerves innervate it, and how many things need to be in coordination to complete a simple action of raising the arms overhead. It almost makes me believe that some amazing scientist from some other world must have designed our DNAs which has a biological clock for making all changes in the body happen the way they do.
Of course, when the things are that meticulous, it does need decades of learning, affording which is also not very easy.
When my friends would go out having fun in the park, watch movies, concerts and parties, I would be wearing my glasses and sitting alone in the room with the bone set and books, reading every aspect of the bone.
When other kids enjoyed Halloween, I would be amazed at looking at the skeleton and revise the names of each marking on our bones where the muscles get attached and the nerves course through.
The time went so fast, and one day when I raised my head up to see what's happening, I realized that I wasn't a child anymore, I wasn't even a young person anymore, I was a middle aged person who had dedicated her life to medicine and was happy about it.
I pursued Internal Medicine to unfold the puzzle of life. I pursued Geriatrics as I wanted to understand the process of ageing and take care of my parents as well as the elderly patients. I pursued public health to learn how to spread awareness.
My mentors and program directors and teaching doctors had an immense role in feeding into my interest in Rheumatology which budded since childhood when I saw my dear cousin limited by Rheumatoid arthritis at an early age.
In the process, I found great people, both kind and unkind. Everyone taught me important life lessons.
During this journey, I also lost a lot of family members, including my own dearest brother and whose blessings always stayed with me.
I never had the luxury to take the time to shed a tear and the art of medicine healed me itself.
Life is a theme park with a lot of roller coaster rides. Recently we had an addition of a new pandemic ride which some of us survived, some didn't. Again, the science and medicine proved to be the savior and fortunately a winner. Proud to be a part of such a great team of scientific warriors.
At this time, I am proudly raising my beautiful daughter, Riya, as a single mom. Riya has done medical hours in early childhood and has been a wonderful accomplice. My elderly parents shower their blessings on me. I feel fortunate to be able to be with them. They are the reason why I am here in this world, doing what I do. They are the reason why I love driving to Assisted Living once every so often to take care of the elderly who cannot commute.
I try my best to focus on each patient and try my best to give each patient the time and attention they need while respecting other patient's time.
What I didn't learn in the process was how insurance and billing things happen so I have a team of people to help. Interestingly enough, insurance processes are so meticulous that it would need a PhD of its own and studying those would certainly take several years. Hats off to the people who understand the world of insurance. They probably are smarter than the doctors.
What I also didn't learn was how lab agencies, pharmacy and insurance were functioning and how they have developed interesting ways to approve or deny labs, imaging, and prior authorizations.
We do not have any financial ties with any lab or any imaging center or any pharmacy. We always make our patients feel free to go wherever they want and have the results faxed to us when they get that done. Recommendations for places are available to the patients who ask for suggestions.
As a doctor's office, we will take the time to understand your problem and help in every possible way to identify your problem and plan an appropriate treatment. However, we do respect our patient's free will and let them make an educated decision about their treatment and where they want to get the evaluation and work-up done and where they want to get treated. Our work is to make our patients understand their condition and educate them about the workup needed and available treatment options.
While our staff tries to help provide free services to help our patients, this is certainly not our expertise and with the zillion types of insurance and sub-insurance and their rules and policies, please understand that we have no way to predict which insurance will approve or deny any particular lab or imaging or medicine.
The creation of JSR Health Rheumatology is an attempt to provide the patient the quality of care they deserve and the time that they need so they could be heard and rightly treated. However, we are limited in providing free services to our patients regarding assistance with their insurance. We do have HIPAA trained office staff who help me keep a track of things within human capacity and bring to my attention things that need my attention, since as a doctor, I am busy seeing patients all day. Please understand that these services are billed to your insurance to be able to sustain the support for our patients.
We request you to not hold us responsible for denials from your insurance, any billing from your lab, imaging center and pharmacy as we have no knowledge of what and how they bill nor we have any capacity to change anything at their end and oftentimes we are not even made aware of what is going on at their end, until we learn from you. We request you to reach out to them independently. We will try our best to help you in the process as we strongly believe in advocating for our patients. Our office is on your side and we request you to not hold us responsible for things over which we don't have any control.
That being said, caring for our patients is the best thing in the world for us and we continually thank you for the opportunity to make a positive difference in your lives.
We welcome you to JSR Health with open arms!
Sincerely,
Dr. Jaya Sonkar MD MPH
Rheumatologist, Geriatrician, Internist
JSR Health PLLC
21216 NW Freeway, Bldg 1, Suite 230
Cypress, Tx 77429
Mailing Address:
13100 Wortham Center Dr., #307,
Houston, Tx 77433
Office Phone: 409 276 5595
Fax: 314 405 9678
University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston alumna
New York Medical College Alumna
Harvard School of Public Health alumna
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