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Insurances Not Contracted With MicroSpine

Medicare is a bureaucratic system that often is motivated by corporation lobbyists. There are separate billing codes for hospitals versus surgery centers and the large hospital corporations do not want surgeries performed in surgery centers since it means less business for their hospitals. The lobby is so strong that when we questioned the politicians about this matter, they didn't even reply to the questions. As long as large corporations run the government, these types of situations won't change. One might ask "Why doesn't MicroSpine convert to a hospital?" We would love to convert to a hospital but this too is regulated by the state government to protect the hospitals from competition. Why does an aspirin cost $5 dollars at the hospital? Because most hospitals have protective monopolies that prevent other hospitals from coming into their markets. It is a very un-American practice but, as usual, Big Business runs everything. We suggest that you contact your state of Florida representative or senator and request that MicroSpine be given a CON (certificate of Need) so that MicroSpine can convert to a hospital and thus accept Medicare entirely. Some ask why don't we operate on Medicare patients at the local hospital, but to do so would require us to double what we charge regular insurance patients to cover the lost revenue at our surgery center. Even if surgeries aren't being performed, nurses and staff want to be paid and thus any surgeries that are done outside of our facility only make costs for regular insurance people more expensive. Nonetheless, currently Medicare pays around 20 cents on the dollar and reimbursement is less than half the amount of our costs. They expect the small amount they pay the surgeon to cover all the costs of caring for the patient. This would be fine except they only pay the surgeon about $1000 per surgery and they expect that amount of money to pay for the employees salaries, utilities, supplies, etc. which is at least 5 times that amount. If they would pay us what they paid a hospital to perform the same service then that would be fine, but the hospital lobby spends millions to prevent such actions. This is why recently Dr. Mork decided to "opt-out" of Medicare. We didn't want to do this but Medicare itself doesn't understand their own rules and we would get different responses from different people which would amount to getting paid only some of the time. Unfortunately, at the end of the month, our employees want to get paid, utilities want their reimbursements, and the government wants their taxes and at 20 cents on the dollar for outpatient spinal surgery, Medicare just cannot be accepted. The IRS doesn't view "free or discounted healthcare" as charity and thus you can't even get a tax break for lost revenue. We are still contracted with Medicare for every other issue, except for Dr. Mork's services. We truly want to help the elderly population but unlike the government, we cannot run a deficit and survive. the only solution for us is to eventually buy or convert to a hospital and given the government regulations this won't happen soon.
 

BCBS has decided not to contract with MicroSpine even though several state senators, local businesses, and nearly a thousand potential patients requested it. Their reasons included that they have an over-abundance of spinal surgeons in our area and there is currently no further need. This is amazing when the media states that there is a doctor shortage. We continue to request that patients and potential patients call or write their BCBS representative and request that BCBS contract with MicroSpine. We will continue to attempt to contract so as to reduce your expenses and ask you to call or write your BCBS provider and ask them to contract with us. CLICK HERE to see the denial letters from BCBS.
 

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