Our locations:

30 East 76th Street (corner of Madison Avenue), 2nd floor, New York, NY 10021 (our building is old and while the office is wheelchair accessible, our bathroom is not).
2 Greenridge Avenue; the entrance is at 99 Maple Avenue (green awning), White Plains, NY 10605 (Only Dr. Mauskop sees patients at this location, usually, on the first Wednesday of the month).

Our email is admin@nyheadache.com, but keep in mind that it is not HIPAA-compliant and after you are registered in our system, please use our patient portal www.myhealthrecord.com for all communications.

If you do need to call, our telephone (for both locations) is 212-794-3550 (appointments, general questions, prior authorizations, & medical records – ext. 0, prescriptions – ext. 1, billing – ext 2, Botox-related – ext. 3)
Fax: 212-794-0591.

First Visit:  Your first visit will consist of a thorough diagnostic interview and examination, and your initial diagnosis will be discussed at its conclusion. Together we will design an individualized treatment program for you, to include the prevention of further attacks and tools to manage an acute headache.

Please bring to your appointment your insurance card, physician referral form (if required), MRIs and other records, and the completed Initial Visit Form. You can download the Initial Visit form in a fillable PDF format, complete it, and email it to admin@nyheadache.com. If you are using Apple Preview or another non-Adobe program, choose Print from the File menu and then use the dialog box’s PDF option to save it to a PDF. Otherwise, we will receive an empty form. This does not happen if you are using Adobe.

Download Initial Visit Form (Fillable pdf)
Download Consent for a telemedicine consultation (Fillable pdf)
Download Follow-Up Form (Fillable pdf)
Download HIPAA Authorization for Disclosure of Health Information (Fillable pdf)

Pay your bill here 

Children under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.

If you’d like to consult with Dr. Mauskop after seeing one of our other providers, you will be charged only the follow-up rather than the initial consultation fee.

If you require completion of any additional employment, insurance, or legal forms you may be charged $25 to $250 per form.

Emergencies/After-Hour Calls: During regular office hours (Monday through Friday, 9 to 5) send a message through the portal or call the office for an urgent problem. For urgent matters outside of office hours, please call your provider directly on his/her cell phone or go immediately to the nearest emergency room. Please do not call providers’ cell phones and do not text for prescription refills and other routine matters.

Missed appointments: We try to allow as much time as each patient needs to discuss current problems and do not overlook our schedule. We typically have a waiting list for new patients. Therefore, we ask you to confirm your appointment at least 24 hours in advance. If an appointment is missed or not canceled 24 hours in advance your credit card will be charged $75 for a follow-up visit and $250 for an initial.

Contacting your provider: Please use the patient portal www.myhealthrecord.com for all communications. All messages and calls will be returned as soon as possible, usually towards the end of the day and most of the time, within 24 hours. When you message or call, please leave a number where you can be reached both during the day and later in the evening. E-mail is an alternative, but please keep e-mails brief and do not use them for urgent matters. We may charge a fee for high-volume email exchanges.
 
Prescription Refills: Prescriptions written at the time of your office visit should cover you until your next appointment.  If you run out of medication please call the office prescription line for a pharmacy call-in.
Exceptions: 
1) If you are seriously overdue for an appointment your prescription may not be called in; as a general rule, you need to be seen at least every 6 months for regular prescriptions and every 3 months for controlled substances;
2) Routine prescriptions cannot be filled after hours or on an emergency basis;
3) Narcotics and sleeping medications cannot be called in and are written only at the time of an office visit, so please do not allow these prescriptions to run out without an office visit scheduled.
We need the following information to send in prescriptions:  
1) Medication name (if you do not use generics, please so state).
2) Dose in milligrams.
3) The number of pills you take each day and in a month.
4) Pharmacy telephone number.

About reimbursement for Botox injections
Botox is one of the most effective and safe treatments for frequent migraine headaches. Dr. Mauskop has been using Botox to treat his patients for over 25 years, but since 2010, when Botox was approved by the FDA for the treatment of chronic migraines in adults, many insurance companies started to pay for it. However, getting the insurers to pay is not a simple process but in most cases, our staff can obtain prior authorization. However, almost all insurers have several prerequisites for getting this treatment approved.  First of all, you have to have 15 or more days with headaches each month in the preceding 3 to 6 months. This doesn’t mean that you have to have 15 days with migraine – you can have 8 days with migraine and 7 days with a mild headache. Some insurers may also require that your migraine headache if left untreated, lasts for at least 4 hours. We encounter many patients who will say that they have two migraines a week and do not mention their milder headaches, because, unlike migraines, they are not as disabling. It is a good idea to keep a diary, either a paper one, which you can find at the top of this page or an electronic one, which you can find in an app store. The diary will help provide documentation of the frequency, type of headaches you have and other information useful not only for the insurer but for your doctor as well.

The second requirement is that you try and fail two or three (depending on the insurer) prophylactic migraine drugs, such as topiramate (Topamax), divalproex sodium (Depakote), gabapentin (Neurontin), propranolol (Inderal), amitriptyline (Elavil), etc. The drug is considered to have failed if it doesn’t help after the dose is escalated to the usual strength or if it causes unacceptable side effects, even at the smallest dose. Some insurance companies will request documentation from us or from your previous doctors that you in fact tried those drugs.

Getting prior authorization does not guarantee that the insurer will pay for the Botox treatment and they clearly state that. After we perform the treatment and ask for payment some insurers may request doctor’s notes to verify that the treatment was performed and all the requirements were met. Even after the payment is issued, the insurer has the right to review charts and ask us for money back for up to six years after the service was provided, if they feel that the code used was wrong or some other requirement was not met. This is why you will have to sign a number of forms informing you about all these caveats.

It is also a good idea to check with your insurer yourself. All this information about Botox is usually posted on their website, but if not, call and write down the information along with the name of the person who gave it to you.

While most patients require Botox injections every 12 weeks, some need them more frequently – every 10 weeks and rarely, every 8 weeks. A few the insurance companies allow injections every 10 weeks, but many allow it to be done only every 12 weeks or 3 months, to the day. Our staff can check your plan’s policy.

Although Botox is not approved in children under 18, it is as effective in kids as in adults. Many insurers will pay for Botox in children if all of the above conditions are met. The youngest child with chronic migraines we’ve treated with Botox was 8.

If you do have to pay out of pocket or your copay is very high, the manufacturer of Botox, Allergan offers up to a $1,500 rebate on each treatment with a $4,000 yearly maximum. Go to BotoxSavingsProgram.com for more information.

Additional information about receiving Botox treatment at the NYHC:

Botox remains one of the safest and most effective treatments for chronic migraines. It also remains very expensive. This is why insurance companies always look for ways to prevent their members from getting it. They also continue to reduce our fees for administering Botox.

You may not know, but it often takes our staff hours to get approval for Botox. This approval has to be constantly reapplied for. We have to provide the insurer with your detailed medical history. They also require documentation about the response to treatment. If they do not see documentation of a good response, they will not approve the next treatment.

All insurance companies consider Botox injections a minor surgery and reimburse it under the “global surgical package”. Most insurance companies have a medical policy on a global period that states that evaluation and management services on the day of a planned procedure are not reimbursable.

These are some of the reasons why we have dedicated Botox days when you receive Botox treatment. These visits are short, typically lasting 15 minutes. They do not allow time for a discussion of your response to treatment, medications you are taking, needed refills and adjustments to medications, blood tests that might be due (we obtain them at least yearly) and their results, medical conditions that might impact your migraines, and other issues. Even if you think that nothing has changed, we need to confirm all of the above items and also document your response to Botox for insurance purposes.

Please make sure to schedule an appointment between Botox visits. Otherwise, we are not able to provide this treatment.