I am thinking of starting practice in underserved population. Do insurance companies offer better billing rate for underserved area? Anybody with experience please advice. Thank you.
Private practice in underserved area?
- Thread starter nrmp
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Assume they don't until you verify it with 100% certainty. This will be difficult, as calling insurance companies, won't reveal rates until you done their credentialing. Others wait until you have signed the contract, and then they reveal their rates.
Your best bet is to talk with other doctors in the area, and if lucky they will divulge some information to you. However, most contracts have confidentiality clauses that prohibit any disclosure of such information. So if you really got the good information from another doctor, they'll have been violating most if not all of their contracts.
Some community mental health centers, and critical care access hospitals will have slightly higher medicaid rates. So one angle to consider is becoming a community mental health center. This however, will incur a lot of excess paperwork and bureaucracy. Some states even have such ridiculous charting requirements for this medicaid population that the EMR is not at all user friendly but happens to check the myriad of boxes needing to be checked as demanded by the government. Experiencing this alone would immediately cure the ailment of "medicare for all" for most afflicted clinicians.
Another option to consider is to take the better insurance, and offer sliding scale to others. Granted some insurance will say you must charge full price to all others, but its also one of those gambles you can take... Will they really try to enforce that on the only psychiatrist in middle of nowhere land?
Your best bet is to talk with other doctors in the area, and if lucky they will divulge some information to you. However, most contracts have confidentiality clauses that prohibit any disclosure of such information. So if you really got the good information from another doctor, they'll have been violating most if not all of their contracts.
Some community mental health centers, and critical care access hospitals will have slightly higher medicaid rates. So one angle to consider is becoming a community mental health center. This however, will incur a lot of excess paperwork and bureaucracy. Some states even have such ridiculous charting requirements for this medicaid population that the EMR is not at all user friendly but happens to check the myriad of boxes needing to be checked as demanded by the government. Experiencing this alone would immediately cure the ailment of "medicare for all" for most afflicted clinicians.
Another option to consider is to take the better insurance, and offer sliding scale to others. Granted some insurance will say you must charge full price to all others, but its also one of those gambles you can take... Will they really try to enforce that on the only psychiatrist in middle of nowhere land?
