Wow, this is a fantastic piece about the payers not making their telemedicine policies clear, consistent, or fair. Maybe we all ought to encourage our clients to get on twitter like the example here!
How Private Insurers Have Dragged Their Feet On A Crucial COVID-19 Safeguard
Received this message off-line for fear of retribution. It’s sad how we (rightfully) fear telling the truth about how some of these organizations react.
Agree. We are seeing payments come in now for telemedicine visits. Even though
we have parity in Texas, we don’t have payment parity. We were paid at 75% of
our fee for the same E&M in the office by a particularly large nationwide
payor. These telemedicine visits require investment in technology, increase in
staff time to guide families on how to use the technology, collecting payment,
and in some cases more physician work and/or time. We are saving these
companies money by keeping the children out of the UCs and ERs. It’s aggravating.This is UHC by the way.
we reached out to Anthem BCBS yesterday and as of this am they are for the next 90 days paying par for E/M visits and supposedly reprocessing prior claims for the period where we were underpaid. remains to be seen if they actually do this… and what happens when the 90 days are up.
I just hope that when they state that they are waiving cost sharing they realize we as Physicians are not waiving it. If insurance companies are choosing to waive the cost sharing that means that is what the insurance is now responsible to picking up. I feel a lot are waiving it and then deducting the co pay / co insurance/ deductible from what they attend to pay.