60% of radiologists and other docs surveyed say staff is devoting more time to billing compliance
About 60% of radiologists and other physicians say their support staff is devoting more hours to billing compliance than they did five years ago.
That’s according to new survey data from Medscape, released Sept. 20. About 40% of those polled said they’ve seen staff hours rise “somewhat” in this regard while 21% deemed the increase as “substantial.” Only 7% had seen a decline, including 2% who deemed it as “substantial.”
Meanwhile, about two-thirds of physicians said staff hours devoted to processing prior authorizations had risen in the past five years.
“This completely aligns with what we’re experiencing with our client base,” Bill Ringwood, associate consulting principal with Vizient company Sg2, told Medscape. “Not only in the increase in the number of prior authorizations but also their complexity and the time required to successfully complete one. It’s probably a little worse on the [hospital] side than on the professional side, but that’s not to say physicians don’t experience the pain.”
Medscape also explored radiologists’ and other physicians’ happiness with reimbursement rates. Docs were least content in the mid-Atlantic (including Washington, D.C.), with 34% expressing dissatisfaction. Those in the east south-central part of the U.S. (including Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio) were most content, with only 22% dissatisfied with pay rates.
“It comes down more to individual physician groups or specialty types and their market power, how well they can negotiate rates,” Wayne Gibson, senior managing director and leader of healthcare risk management at FTI Consulting, told the news outlet. “Do the payers need you in-network? It’s all about how important providers are in that submarket to the payer and how important that payer is to the submarket.”
About 37% said they believe payers at least somewhat influence treatment with prior authorization and other policies. That’s compared to 28% who said “quite a bit,” 16% who said “very little,” and 9% “a great deal.” Only 6% of respondents said their employer has substantial leverage over payers, 49% said “some,” and 45% said they have zero advantage.
The findings are based on a survey of 1,030 physicians across 30 specialties (including about 30 radiologists) conducted in February and March. Read more about the results:
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.