Many physicians don’t accept Medicaid because of poor payments. Those that do often lose money.
As hospitals focus on the bottom line, benevolent physicians who dedicate their practice to treating the poor are finding themselves on the firing line.
Stories like this won’t help any more doctors open their doors to Medicaid patients.
Related posts:
- Cutting Medicaid payments
- What happens if the safety net clinics start refusing to see Medicare or Medicaid patients?
- California is cutting Medicaid payments
- Medicaid cancer screening
- With Medicaid cuts looming, guess who’s supporting doctors?
- How cutting Medicaid payments hurts patients
- When Medicare and Medicaid are your best payers
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{ 2 comments }
Kevin,
I have a philosophy in my pricate practice that i feel comfortable with when it comes to medicaid. I accept any patient with “state run” medicaid. This is a government program that is attempting to help the underserved. But i absolutely do not accept and “Managed Medicaid”. These for-profit programs still pay 30 cents on the dollar but are for profit. I can’t support this at all. I am sorry. In Ohio, the managed for profit are Buckeye and Champus and others. I just can’t get paid 30 cents on the dollar when someone is profiting from that. I feel this is my middle ground stance. I also see any self-pay that walks in the door. They get a significant discount that usually makes their OV about $21. I am comfortable with this when i go home at night.
Medicaid in Maryland is abysmal. It is not unusual for the agency to stop paying claims well before the end of the fiscal year. So direct-to-agency claims just don’t get paid for months. Sometimes they don’t get paid at all. Maryland also contracts to for-profit HMOs who have Medicaid managed-care products. Those corporations grab their chunk of guaranteed profits and then spoon out payments to physicians and others filing claims. Their performance is as bad or worse.
The payments when they are made don’t cover the costs of service. So, not surprisingly, many doctors in private practice, who can’t run “deficits” without going bankrupt, just refuse to expose their practices and their personal and family welfare to those risks and abuses.
As for this doctor, fourteen years in this practice, I have a hard time believing that he wasn’t made well aware beforehand that he was causing a significant and ongoing loss to his employer. If this doctor wants to be employed by an organization, with the security of a guaranteed paycheck and all the other benefits, then he has a duty to be mindful of how his practices, including his dealings with inadequately-paying insurers affects the welfare of his employer. Just as the grocery clerk has no right to give away store merchandise, this doctor hasn’t any right to give away his store, especially when he doesn’t own it. It hardly matters how deserving he thinks his patients are. If he wants to give away services, he really should hang out his own shingle and see how easy it is to do that.
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