Navigating the Costs of ENT and Facial Plastic Procedures

What you’ll learn

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Listen to the audio version below.

Audio Transcript:

Dr. Undavia: All right, so Dr. Smith and I, Dr. Undavia, we’re here to talk about some of the costs of the things that we do. And we get this question asked almost every day, almost every 10 minutes or 20 minutes, because it’s important to know what to expect with some of the treatments that we do. And so today we’re gonna talk a lot about cosmetic surgery, but it applies absolutely to functional stuff that we do with insurance as well. And so patients will ask me how much a rhinoplasty costs or how much their facelift is gonna cost or how much are their eyes gonna cost? And it’s tough to give, without a full exam, it is tough to give an exact answer. But in general, any time we deal with any type of surgery, we’re gonna deal with surgical costs, we’re gonna deal with anesthesia costs, and we’re gonna deal with facility or hospital costs. Now, not every procedure is gonna have anesthesia costs or facility costs, but I like to just talk about that with patients in case that’s their preference.

For instance, for rhinoplasty cost, our fee at NJNT and facial plastic surgery is $8,500. That needs to be done in the operating room. If this was just a strict rhinoplasty, the anesthesia costs and the hospital costs are based off of time. And we operated a couple of different hospitals, and they each have their own costs. So I’ve seen anywhere from $1,263 for the first hour, followed by a sliding scale down for every additional 15 minutes, all the way up to 2,200 for the first hour, followed by a sliding scale down. The vast majority of our rhinoplasties take about three hours. So I tell patients that in general, their cost is gonna be between $12,000 to $13,000 for all of it together. Now again, if it takes shorter, their cost will be shorter. We don’t like to rush in the operating room, but we just want patients to have a maximum cost so that they can plan and you’ll know the costs that they may have are prescription costs, like antibiotics, pay medication, antibiotic appointment. Now, where it gets confusing is if insurance plays a role. If we’re doing something like a septoplasty plus a rhinoplasty, it’s so hard to tell a generic number for patients, but our patients in general pay between $8,000.

So technically more than it would have cost just for the rhinoplasty because there are deductibles and copays that they may have to pay to the hospital associated with that septoplasty. Same thing happens if we’re doing sinuses at the same time. So it is individualized, but once we meet patients and we go over exactly what we need to do, we can give them a pretty accurate quote based off of how much time we think it’ll take and what we’re doing. Now there’s other stuff like eyelid surgery where we do it.

Dr. Smith: Well, let me ask you a question before you jump onto the eyelids. What if I’ve already had a rhinoplasty and now I need another revision rhinoplasty or there’s something about it I don’t like, or it’s been 15 years and I really want to change the tip of my nose. I don’t like what was done before. So what would you tell me if I was the patient and I wanted another?

Dr. Undavia: That happens in the office all the time. That’s a perfect question. So revision rhinoplasty. It really depends on what we’re doing. If we’re doing stuff that requires the operating room, it’s going to be a longer surgery. If it’s stuff that we can do in the office under local anesthesia, shorter surgery, less costs. The revision rhinoplasty costs, again, depending on what you do, anywhere from 7,000 for the surgical cost all the way up to 13,000 for the surgical costs. Depending on what you need with anesthesia in the hospital, that might change things a little bit that actually might increase. So for a total revision rhinoplasty, you might have to go all the way up to 17,000. But it may not be that way.

Dr. Smtih: What if I don’t have enough cartilage in my nose and you need to take cartilage from elsewhere? Is there any change in the cost?

Dr. Undavia: We don’t charge you if we have to get it from your septum or from your ear or from your rib. But if we’re doing irradiated cartilage, the hospital will charge you. Typically, each hospital has a slightly different fee. Typically, that’s about 750 for the cartilage graft.

If we need to get temporalis fascia, we also don’t charge you for that.

Dr. Smith: Um, I think I might’ve broken my nose in the past. Can I just get this covered under insurance is a question that we get a lot.

Dr. Undavia: We can, uh, yeah, it does decrease costs, but there are still cosmetic fees associated with surgery. So what it does is it decreased the amount of time that we have to tell the hospital. We’re doing functional stuff where we’re doing cosmetic stuff. So the costs can come down a lot of times our patients only end up paying about $8,000 for rhinoplasty stuff. It changes per person, especially if they have a high deductible plan. And for our patients, some do, because they’re young and healthy, they never meet their deductible. So in those patients, what we do is we give them two options. One is just totally outside of insurance, and one is using insurance. And we see what the cheaper option is, and we go with it. And we tell patients, they’ll know both options right away.

So yeah, that brings us to doing stuff in the office. So typically if we need to do anything that we can do in the office, we’ll do in the office because it’s easier for the patient, their recovery is faster and it is much more affordable. So you don’t have anesthesia fees, you don’t have hospital fees. There may be a surgical tray involved, but it depends on what we’re doing. But for most patients, if we’re doing eyelid surgery, it’s just the surgical costs. If we’re doing Rhinoplasty surgical costs. We can do mini face lifts in the office, surgical costs. But again, if we go to the operating room, it goes back to that same formula where they charge for the first hour and then they have a sliding scale down for every additional time increment. I hope that helps. I’m sorry that I can’t give you exact numbers, but if you would like a consult and you want to know what it would cost for you, our consultations are complimentary. We have a $200 deposit that gets you the consultation and then we give it back to you if you choose not to have anything done with this or it gets applied to whatever treatment you’re having. So yeah, reach out to us if you have any questions. Greg, you have any?

Dr. Smith: No, that’s perfect.

Dr. Undavia: All right, take care.