Physicians with Memorial Health Partners are reassuring their patients insured by Cigna Healthcare after many patients received letters last weekend warning that the physicians group might no longer be covered.
“We are actively working with Cigna to find a mutually acceptable solution,” said Dr. Collin Cherry, internal medicine specialist with physician group Beacon Health Alliance, an affiliate of Memorial Health Partners. He is chairman of the contract negotiation committee of Memorial Health Partners.
“We remain hopeful that that solution will be forthcoming well before” the expiration of the parties’ current contract next month, he said. An agreement likely will be reached this week, he said.
Over the weekend and early this week, Cigna enrollees who also are patients of Memorial Health Partners got a rude awakening: A mailing from Cigna Healthcare warned that the insurer’s contract with the physicians group was set to expire May 15.
That would mean patients who received care on or after that date from Memorial Health Partners might have to pay the full cost and would need to find new doctors if an agreement wasn’t reached before then.
A Cigna official said if the insurer has not reached a new contract agreement with a physician group within 30 days of a contract’s expiration, the insurer notifies customers who have used that physician “as a standard of practice.”
“These types of situations are fairly common,” Ann Marie C. Raymond, public relations specialist with Cigna, said in a prepared statement. “While Cigna will continue to work with Memorial Health Partners to come up with a contract that keep costs down and quality of care up, active negotiations continue. To state anything else today would be premature.”
Continue reading by following this link to a related story:
Article: BlueCross, Cigna slow to back Baucus health care legislation