A Park Avenue podiatrist billed $178,900 to fix two crooked toes, office procedures that lasted less than an hour.
Amazingly, insurance giant United Healthcare/Oxford paid most of the bill, cutting a check earlier this month for $175,098.80.
Instead of sending the check to Suzanne Levine, a foot fixer with a roster of celebrity clients, United Healthcare mailed it to the shocked patient. And Levine’s office has been frantically trying to collect the money.
“The doctor’s office calls me up and says you’re getting a check, we want the check. It’s our check,” said Keith Kantrowitz, a Manhattan mortgage banker whose wife was treated by Levine. “I said, wait a minute, I don’t owe you . . . money.”
The outrageous charges, and payment of them, has health-care experts scratching their heads.
“I’m stunned,” said Dr. John Santa, a director of Consumer Reports Health. “Did they use a proton beam for this?”
There are no laws regulating prices, state officials say. Other Upper East Side podiatrists say they don’t bill more than $3,000 to correct a hammertoe.
Kantrowitz’s wife, Renee, sought help from Levine last year after seeing her on television. Upon feeling a tingling sensation in her foot, she made an appointment with the publicity-conscious Levine, who calls her office Institute Beauté. (She has glossy photos and letters of gratitude in her office from the likes of Anna Wintour, Barbara Walters, Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, Liam Neeson and Naomi Campbell.)
Levine — who as a podiatrist is not a medical doctor — injects Botox to smooth out tootsies (“for that ‘angry’ look”) and touts procedures such as “foot face-lifts.” She also injects Juvéderm and other chemicals into the pads of feet as a cushion against the pain of high heels.
Levine offered to straighten out one of Kantrowitz’s toes, making a small incision in her foot, a procedure done in one of her exam rooms that took about 25 minutes. When Kantrowitz returned for a follow-up, Levine did another toe in a similarly short session.
The doctor assured Kantrowitz that everything would be covered by her insurance.
But Levine then billed Kantrowitz’s credit card $6,000 and tried to squeeze more cash out of the insurance carrier. A lot more.
The insurer agreed to pay $170,940.04 plus $4,158.76 in interest, according to the explanation of benefits that Renee Kantrowitz received along with the check.
The sum is more than enough to pay for major heart surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center, where it costs the average patient $125,392.
Levine’s office manager, Sophia Johnson, called Keith Kantrowitz seven times last week saying he needed to bring in the check and sign it over to Levine. “That’s our money,” she told him.
She offered to refund Kantrowitz the $6,000 credit-card charge if he brought in the check.
She texted Renee Kantrowitz repeatedly, saying in one missive: “Oxford has issued a check finally for the procedure.”
Keith Kantrowitz smelled a rat.
Oxford “gave me $18 [for an EKG]. The doctor charged me $400,” he said. “And she gets a check for $175,000? What does that tell you?”
When Kantrowitz asked for a statement, Johnson provided it Friday by fax, calling the costs “surgical operating room charges” at $86,450 each. The statement on office letterhead asks to “please endorse insurance reimbursement check received from Oxford Health Plan.”
“I can arrange a messenger to pick up the check today,” Johnson wrote in a cover letter she signed. “As I mentioned, my employer will be out of town for a week and I would like to take care of this today.”
When The Post called Levine’s office Friday for comment, Johnson’s tune instantly changed.
Johnson insisted the United Healthcare claim had been “a mistake,” but did not elaborate.
She claimed she wanted to retrieve the check so she could return it to the insurance company.
But she failed to explain why she repeatedly pressed Kantrowitz to endorse the check.
Johnson claimed she submitted a corrected claim to the firm. She said Levine, who typically sits next to her in the office, was unaware of her purported “mistake” and her efforts to retrieve the check. Levine declined to comment, citing patient privacy laws.
Keith Kantrowitz said he does not believe Johnson.
“She gave me the invoice,” he said. “There was no mistake.”
Kantrowitz said he’s holding onto the uncashed check until he gets answers. A spokeswoman for United Healthcare said it has launched an investigation “into the provider’s billing for out-of-network services, as charges like these are beyond egregious. We are suspending payment in this situation pending investigation.”