@sueinmn, I have already checked with member services of my insurance. All they can say is that Mayo Clinic Az has a contract with our insurance and members have in-network access. They were not able to elaborate anything further. Unfortunately, member services is not always as simple as you think if you want to get an accurate answer. Many times you have to get to the source (supervisor and above)who has may be helpful but that's not an easy thing these days, esp when your insurance is a national company with thousands and thousands of members.
My post is to those who have in-network access and are current patients of Mayo Clinic to share what their experiences have been at Mayo in regards to having in-network access. Have they ever been charged out-of-network rate at Mayo even though they have in-network access? If so, under what circumstances? I can tell you this has happened to me with some, not all, hospitals/institutions. Under our insurance, most not all, ERs will be out-of-network, even though the hospital associated with the ER is in-network. And some physicians who have privileges at an in-network hospital can charge out-of-network rate. This is called surprised billing, because you don't know who you're end up with at the hospital under emergency situations. And we have had to deal with surprised billing once before!! The only institution I know of with no surprised billing is UCLA. My family and I have in-network access at UCLA, and that means services (including ER) and physicians associated with UCLA are in-network.