Venture capital, hospital consolidation, insurance cutbacks, and patient co-pays making doctor’s lives harder
Great River, NY – March 20, 2019 – The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons just wrapped their annual conference in Las Vegas, and among the more than 40,000 attendees, a growing number of surgeons were voicing concerns about a problem that won’t go away – they weren’t getting paid all the money they had worked for.
According to Michael N. Brown, CEO of Fellow Health Partners, Inc., “There was even more grumbling this year about billing, payments, and insurance companies. It seemed to be a perfect storm.
Patient co-pays have risen dramatically which means that physicians, hospitals and surgery centers have found themselves in the uncomfortable role of collecting directly from the patients themselves, if they can. They have also been losing out on insurance company denials because no one is resubmitting their claims to get them paid, especially at some of the bigger hospitals. In fact, 60% of denied claims are never resubmitted. If there was one question I heard over and over at the AAOS last week, it was, ‘where is customer service?’.
They also complained about the challenges being faced by some hospitals. I overheard a couple talking about a Becker’s Hospital Review story regarding a hospital in upstate New York that weren’t able to collect on $38 million owed to doctors and the hospital – all because the new billing software didn’t work.”
He continued, “On a positive note, more doctors are taking control of the situation by forming their own ambulatory surgery centers or creating larger, more robust practices. However, the ones I spoke with all agreed that an efficient, effective billing service was essential to their success.”
He continued, “This is very encouraging for all of us at Fellow Health Partners. We built the company from the ground up to provide superior technical and customer service for our clients, particularly to help them make sure they get paid everything they’ve worked so hard to earn.
Because Fellow Health Partners is grounded in advanced technology and continuous training in both technical and people skills, it can scale rapidly to serve these doctors and facilities while maintaining extremely high quality. Optimistically, we look forward to the opportunity to serve these talented surgeons and organizations, when they are ready to look for an alternative to their current billing experience.”
