Leslie, is that my wife you have as your biller?
We have fought over a 3 cents claim and indeed, we have gotten checks as low as $0.03. It cost more money to cash these checks (but it costs the insurance company money plus postage to process a 3 cent check, too... LOL). If we don't fight each and every claim, the reimbursement starts to slowly drop (and I believe that this is a deliberate tactic to see if we are on our toes).
Recently, I have been trying to sign on with CIGNA. They will not commit to a fee schedule. They gave us a laughable "Market Fee Schedule" with only two E&M codes that we actually use. There is a fee schedule that this may not be respresentative of our reimbursement and that the reimbursement changes with market conditions!!!!! After reminding them that they got into trouble for non-disclosure of fee schedule, they stopped corresponding with me. I will turn them over to our medical society and see if they have broken any of the settlement agreements with physicians. The sad part is that there are people graduating from medical school who are stupid enough to sign agreements without an actual agreed fee schedule.
OK. My turn at a conspiracy theory... (ready for this one, Hockeyref?).
Medical schools and residency programs are part of a conspiracy run by powerful people who want to perpetuate keeping physicians stupid, poor, and powerless. My residency program mentioned to me that no one really goes into private practice but they begrudgingly gave a half-assed practice managment seminar because they were mandated.
When you think about it, residencies and medical schools are essentially run by powerful people that employ physicians (it's a way to keep the labor supply up so they can continue profiting off the sweats of their graduates).
I would love to see a medical school and residency program that has a goal to send all of their graduates into private practice. This may be the only way to keep the integrity of this profession from sliding further.
