Medicare and Medicaid Under-Reimbursement Continues to Drive Healthcare Providers Out of the Programs
No clinical pathology laboratories are known to have ceased serving Medicare and Medicaid patients
It’s widely acknowledged by physicians and other providers that Medicaid reimbursement in many states is significantly less than the true cost of providing the service. There are also many types of health procedures where Medicare reimbursement fails to fully reimburse the provider. Thus, it is an important signal when two prominent healthcare organizations announce that—in certain locations and for certain services—they will no longer serve Medicaid or Medicare patients.
Pathologists and clinical laboratory managers will soon see an increasing number of healthcare providers decide to cease serving Medicare and/or Medicare patients. Just in the past 12 months, such nationally respected healthcare organizations as Walgreens and Mayo Clinic have announced that, in certain markets, they will no longer serve new Medicare and/or Medicaid patients. The details of these decisions are revealing.
In the State of Washington, earlier this spring, Walgreens (NYSE:WAG) announced that all 121 of its pharmacies in the state would no longer accept new Medicaid patients. This followed an earlier announcement by the Bartell Drugs chain that its 44-store chain would also no longer serve new Medicaid patients in Washington State.
