Louisiana completely privatized mental health services on March 1, 2012. The behavioral health insurance company Magellan is now the gatekeeper to pretty much ALL mental health services paid for by the state.
True, there appear to be some advantages. Services heretofore unavailable to LA Medicaid recipients, such as group therapy and reimbursement for meeting with your child's therapist without the child having to be present, are now available.
Other than that, it's been HELL. Where do I even begin?
1. Provider reimbursement rates have been SLASHED by about 30%. Imagine finding out
on March 5th that your salary would be cut by 30% -- beginning March 1st. Yes, March 1st of the same year. Uncle Bobby Jindal decided to privatize healthcare, or so he says, because the private sector provides the same or better services for lower costs without all the bureaucratic overhead and logjams. What he didn't mention is that in his kingdom, he would let the private sector insurance company pay psychiatrists and therapists 30% less for services provided to its Medicaid customers than it pays the very same psychiatrists and therapists to see its non-Medicaid customers.
2. As of yesterday, zero of my clinic's claims appear to have been processed, so we have no feedback regarding whether Magellan is the type of insurer that will regularly deny 15%, 30% or whatever% of our claims (i.e., payment for services already provided). You would think the lauded private sector would understand that to keep a business from going under you need to be able to project your revenue.
3. As reported yesterday by Gambit, Clinical Advisor still doesn't work.
Clinical Advisor is an online records management system intended to streamline inter-clinic communications and the mechanism through which clinics submit Medicaid claims. It's not working. As a result, providers — many of which, like the Guidance Center, serve Medicaid clients — haven't been able to submit Medicaid claims. What's more, they say, the newly formed Louisiana Behavioral Health Partnership (LBHP) between the state and the private contractor is denying certain types of claims that used to be paid. [Gambit, 3/20/2012]
4. Forget about Magellan paying for your child to undergo a formal psychological evaluation. They are denying ANY test that in ANY way could POSSIBLY be used to diagnose learning or educational problems even if the test has other uses, AND even if the psychologist states s/he wants to use that test for one of its other uses. Magellan reasons that the federal government already provides that service. In reality, the federal government mandates that school districts evaluate any child 0-21 years of age suspected of having a learning or emotional disability. They just don't provide the schools with all the funding needed to accomplish that.
5. Our insurance specialist has spent most of her time on hold when calling Magellan, one time for 30 minutes before the call was simply disconnected. I emailed a question to the provider account plastered all over their website and on DHH's site -- 8 days ago. Still no response, not even a form reply stating they have received my email.
6. We have heard that Magellan is requiring inpatient psychiatric providers to obtain daily authorization for hospitalized patients, a process that colleagues say is taking about 2 hours/day. This despite what is written on page 15 of their 21-page FAQ document for providers [updated 2/24/2012]:
Q: For our inpatient unit, I was requesting authorizations practically every day, for different patients. I would get multiple authorizations of two days or three days or four days. If a patient comes in to this short-term unit, am I going to have to get an authorization every day?
A: You do not have to obtain an authorization every day, but the authorizations will be for short periods of time. We want to be sure first of all that the person still clinically needs the inpatient level of care and could not be safely returned to services in their community. Secondly, we want to have a discussion at every review about the discharge plan. Discharge planning, in our view, begins at the time of admission. We want to make sure that members have a well-established plan for aftercare services in place when they are discharged. So we are going to be reviewing every two to three days depending on the status of the person’s clinical condition and the plan for discharge.
And those are just the things I care to write about right now.
3 comments:
As a former Medicaid biller may I say you all have my deepest sympathies. I can totally relate.
I like this article, and your article writing style is great. thanks for it.
Thank you very kindly.
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