If you spent 14% of your income, or $14 of every $100 you earn, trying to get your hands on that very same income, wouldn’t you want to find a way to reduce the cost of gaining possession of your paycheck? That’s one goal America’s doctors are trying to achieve by issuing a report card to Medicare and seven other commercial health insurance providers. The insurers routinely grade the performance of healthcare providers and the American Medical Association (AMA) announced earlier today that they have done the same, with the insurance companies’ performance up for evaluation.
Processing claims for submission to the insurance providers is creating a logjam of paperwork and data processing in healthcare facilities across the country, with the AMA estimating an annual cost of $210 billion to cover the cost of excessive handling procedures involved in filing claims. A growing number of doctors are either leaving medical practice or opting out of the medical insurance system and working on a cash basis with patients instead in order to reduce the heavy burden of time and expense increasingly required to work with healthcare providers.
According to the AMA’s report card, Medicare is more likely to pay the rates they contracted to pay. Accurate payment from Medicare happens about 98% of the time. Aetna’s rate of accuracy is 71% and UnitedHealthcare scored lowest, at 62%.
Other aspects of the relationship between physician and insurance provider were evaluated, too, with grades varying across carriers for each factor, although Medicare outscored the other insurance providers in most areas. The AMA would like to reduce the time and manpower required for processing claims, with the goals of reducing patient costs and improving quality of care and time spent with each patient.
A spokesperson representing America’s Health Insurance Plans says timeliness and accuracy from both parties, the insurer and the doctor, are required for speedy claims processing and payments. She also voiced dismay that the AMA did not share its report card with the insurers in question before releasing it to the public earlier today, as the insurance carriers do when rating physicians.
Source: Associated Press
