Dr. Meara could address this situation

Question

A second way that Dr. Meara could address this situation is to accept a new contract from a local health insurer. For the sake of simplicity, assume that a private health care plan that currently does not use BCH has a need for the three visit types in Questions 1 and 4. The volume from the new contract would be 20% of the amount described in Question 4 and the new health plan would reimburse BCH 75% of charges. So if the new contract is accepted, BCH would maintain all of its existing volume and receive 20% more through the new contract. If the contract is accepted, staffing would need to be altered to achieve 98% capacity utilization by type of personnel. What is the financial impact of accepting this contract and altering staffing accordingly? Is reducing staffing or increasing volume more attractive financially?

Answer 1

Sorry Joseph J.,

You have omitted crucial background information from the previous portion of the question, things such as: what organizational unit needs to achieve 98% utilization and what is it currently; what are the type of employee function currently and the staffing, how much time, etc. would need to be added to BCH spreadsheets by the proposed change. The little piece of the question you have shown is not enough -- I think we need to send you to the private health care plan to collect more information!

P.S. The last time I requested the charge for a prospective procedure from a certain medical office, the exact response was, "Oh, that would depend on the details of your coverage. But you would have to call our billing office (a separate organization, with an always-busy phone!) to ask that, we don't keep any of that information here." Hah!

-- Cheers, --Mr d.