<\/p>\n
\nDEAR Doctor,\u201d the letter from the insurance company began. \u201cWe are writing to inform you that a prior authorization is required for the medication you prescribed.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s usually where I stop reading. Thousands of these letters arrive daily in doctors\u2019 offices across the country. They are attempts by insurance companies to prod doctors away from more expensive treatments and toward less expensive alternatives. To use the pricier option, you need to provide a compelling clinical reason.<\/p>\n
In theory, this is a reasonable way to control costs by making it harder to prescribe costlier medications. In practice, it is a wasteful administrative nightmare, a cavalcade of recurring paperwork, lengthy phone calls and bureaucratic battles. <\/p>\n
One study estimated<\/a> that on average, prior authorization requests consumed about 20 hours a week per medical practice: one hour of the doctor\u2019s time, nearly six hours of clerical time, plus 13 hours of nurses\u2019 time. Other studies have suggested that prior authorizations could cost individual practices tens of thousands of dollars a year. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Adventures in \u2018Prior Authorization\u2019 – NYTimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DEAR Doctor,\u201d the letter from the insurance company began. \u201cWe are writing to inform you that a prior authorization is required for the medication you prescribed.\u201d That\u2019s usually where … Continue reading “Adventures in \u2018Prior Authorization\u2019 – NYTimes.com”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative-costs","category-cost-control","category-private-health-insurance"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}