Trump admin lands pledge from 75% of health insurers in effort to improve patient care
Roughly three-quarters of the nation’s health insurance providers signed a series of commitments this week in an effort to improve patient care by reducing bureaucratic hurdles caused by insurance companies’ prior-authorization requirements.Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Dr.Mehmet Oz, alongside Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F.
Kennedy Jr., announced the new voluntary pledge from a cadre of insurance providers, who cover roughly 75% of the population, during a press conference Monday.The new commitments are aimed at speeding up and reducing prior-authorization processes used by insurers, a process that has been long-maligned for unnecessarily delaying patient care and other bureaucratic hurdles negatively impacting patients.
“The pledge is not a mandate.It’s not a bill, a rule.
This is not legislated.This is a opportunity for industry to show itself,” Oz said Monday.
“But by the fact that three-quarters of the patients in the country are already covered by participants in this pledge, it’s a good start and the response has been overwhelming.”Prior-authorization is a process that requires providers to obtain approval from a patient’s insurance provider before that provider can offer certain treatments or services.Essentially, the process seeks to ensure patients are getting the right solution for a particular problem.However, according to Oz, the process has led to doctors being forced to spend enormous amounts of man-power to satisfy prior-authorization requirements from insurers.
He noted during Monday’s press conference that, on average, physicians have to spend 12 hours a week dealing with these requirements, which they see about 40 of per week. “It frustrates doctors.It sometimes results in care that is significantly delayed.
It erodes public trust in the healthcare system.It’s something we can’t tolerate,” Oz insisted.The pledge has been adopted by some of the nation’s larg...