Physician Reimbursements Flawed

The American Medical Association said recently that insurance companies often fail to properly reimburse doctors, needlessly adding more than $200 billion a year to the nation's healthcare tab.

In a six-month period beginning in October an analysis found that doctors in the U.S. spend 14% of the fees they receive from insurers and Medicare on the process of collecting those fees, in a report issued at an AMA annual meeting in Chicago.

The analysis sized up insurers and Medicare on how often they paid on time, how often they denied claims and how often they paid at the contracted rate and other measures.

Medicare outperformed commercial insurers in many areas, and some insurers paid physicians' bills better than others!