To: Governor Andrew Cuomo
Restore viable out-of network healthcare
We are out-of-network providers of physical-health and mental-health services in NYS. Insurers are dramatically curtailing support for out-of-network services by promoting HMOs and imbuing remaining PPOs with forbiddingly high deductibles. Insurers increasingly control time frames and methods and impede the availability of a full range of healthcare services. This situation is not only unfair but is actually dangerous to providers and consumers alike.
We practitioners can best serve our patients when we are free to devote our work time primarily to clinical consultation, patient assessment (as appropriate for clinical purposes) and treatment, not to volumes of paperwork and hours spent petitioning managed-care panels for approval of services. We also require the freedom to use the methods, treatments and timeframes that we identify as best for our patients. Therefore, any compromise which would require us to be treated as managed-care providers would not be a viable solution to the present problem.
We truly appreciate your serious consideration of this matter.
We practitioners can best serve our patients when we are free to devote our work time primarily to clinical consultation, patient assessment (as appropriate for clinical purposes) and treatment, not to volumes of paperwork and hours spent petitioning managed-care panels for approval of services. We also require the freedom to use the methods, treatments and timeframes that we identify as best for our patients. Therefore, any compromise which would require us to be treated as managed-care providers would not be a viable solution to the present problem.
We truly appreciate your serious consideration of this matter.
Why is this important?
Restoration of reasonable and appropriate third-party payments for out-of-network services is essential to the economic, psychological and physical well-being of many NYS consumers, and to the adequate provision of important healthcare services by numerous providers, such as physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurse-practitioners and physical therapists.