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BUSINESSDoctors without prompt-pay protection try new tacticsThe Nebraska Medical Assn. is working with the state's insurance department to make it easier for regulators to investigate physician claims issues. Only two other states lack prompt-pay laws.By Julie A. Jacob, AMNews staff. Oct. 7, 2002. In the three states that don't have prompt-pay laws, options are slim for physicians experiencing claims payment hassles with insurers. But the Nebraska Medical Assn. hopes that its new program to collect physician complaints about insurers and present a summary of them to the state insurance department will encourage state insurance regulators to take action on physician claims payment problems. Because Nebraska lacks a prompt-pay law, state regulators have been reluctant to investigate physician complaints about late payments, said David Filipi, MD, a family physician and chair of the state medical society's insurance commission. In fact, only patients, not physicians, are allowed to make individual complaints to the insurance department in Nebraska. Fortunately, Dr. Filipi added, physicians in the state have had only sporadic problems with late payments. Representatives from the Nebraska Medical Assn. met with insurance regulators last summer to discuss how the state medical society could make it easier for the state insurance department to investigate physician complaints about delayed claims and other claims-related issues. The two parties agreed that the Nebraska Medical Assn. should develop an information collection form, which the state medical society will use to collect and categorize complaints and periodically forward to the insurance department. "We came up with an innovative solution," Dr. Filipi said. "We suggested that we could do some of the footwork and classify the complaints." [...] Full text of AMNews content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2002 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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