Initiative pushes for easier access to patient insurance info

A consortium of more than 50 major insurers, healthcare companies and technology players will develop standards to make access to patient health insurance information easier. The Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH) hopes to have a preliminary set of information-exchange rules in place as early as next year, The Wall Street Journal reports. The new procedures would allow doctors and medical centers much easier access to information which currently is often difficult for them to obtain.

Hunting down and verifying patient insurance information can cost larger medical centers as much as $1 million per year, according to some research. Inaccurate and otherwise faulty information is to blame for about one-fourth of the claims denials issued by American health insurance companies, according to industry sources. Supporters of the CAQH initative say that both those facts mean it could save the healthcare system a great deal of money. Big names involved in the project include Humana, Aetna, New York's Montefiore Medical Center and CMS.

- see this story from The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)

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