Re:California's ‘Surprise’ Billing Law Is Protecting Patient...
by smsm42 on Saturday September 28, 2019 @12:11AM
(#21098387)
> If the physician in question is an employee or a member of a large health organization, it's entirely possible someone else does those negotiations on the person's behalf, so they would have literally no idea.
They personally might not, but their organization certainly does. If they are large hospital, they won't negotiate rates with each person anew, they already have everything figured out. If the doctor can't access it with a couple of clicks on their PC, it's an organizational failure. And if the doctors don't raise a stink about it every day but shrug and tell the patient "you'll see when we send you 20 separate bills, 20 line items each, all coded with internal codes you have no access to" - then it becomes their failure too. I can appreciate they are part of a large organization, but they are not totally powerless and if they really pushed for it they probably could do something. Maybe not one radiologist, but if every radiologist would ask the billing to implement that system, I think they'd think about doing it sooner or later.
They personally might not, but their organization certainly does. If they are large hospital, they won't negotiate rates with each person anew, they already have everything figured out. If the doctor can't access it with a couple of clicks on their PC, it's an organizational failure. And if the doctors don't raise a stink about it every day but shrug and tell the patient "you'll see when we send you 20 separate bills, 20 line items each, all coded with internal codes you have no access to" - then it becomes their failure too. I can appreciate they are part of a large organization, but they are not totally powerless and if they really pushed for it they probably could do something. Maybe not one radiologist, but if every radiologist would ask the billing to implement that system, I think they'd think about doing it sooner or later.