Hey guys,
We still do have some traditional indemnity plans here. Especially with our BC/BS and mostly 80/20 like you said. But the rub still is that they set one fee schedule for the entire region, just about county by county. I was going to tell you all more about how the local Blues controls things and how backwards they treat us, but some of the info I didn't post might have gotten me in trouble for collusion for sharing this privilaged and confidential information. Leave it to say, they call all the shots and everyone in a certain area all get paid the same fees in the same specialties. Real Free Market there, right. "Oh but we have the right to starve and walk away from their boilerplate contract and fee schedule, even though they control our free access to our end customer, the patient." I forgot how free I was, silly me....
And although the AMA that we shouldn't support any more, supposedly saved us all from the SGF cuts, somehow Upstate NY went down in many places anyway, based on geographic reason and others. Like it's cheaper to practice medicine in upstate NY in 2006 then it was in 2005, and again the same from 2006 to 2007.... I kid you not. This is real. We get paid less to send a doctor to your aging mother's bedside at an assisted living facility today in 2007 than we did just a year ago in 2006! We're talking a bedside, housecall for goodness sake. I beg your pardon.....Oh but we did get a small bump on some, not all regular office visit E&M codes like the rest of the country did this year. In many respects, after reiviewing the fees for the last few years, we have only now half returned to the fees that we started with back in 2004-5 when we first opened... "Free Market Anyone?" I've got to go get some work done before we starve here.... Talk among yourselves....
"Good Night and Good Luck"
Paul
