Consider adding business interruption insurance to your business or property policy to cover the loss of revenue if your operations are curtailed or suspended during an insured loss, Dahl suggested. (See “Include Managed Care Contracts in Your Plan.”) If your practice were damaged by fire or water and needed to close for several weeks, business interruption insurance would cover your operating profit, salaries and fixed expenses during that time, he explained. A rider called “extra expense coverage” would pay for the cost of rental space, enabling your practice to remain whole following the loss.
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September 2011Like most insurance policies, business interruption insurance may include a waiting period, deductible and limitations based on how the policy defines a disaster. The goal is to make sure “you don’t have to lay off your employees or have your physicians go without a paycheck,” Dahl said.
Once your disaster plan is complete, laminate copies of the basic steps and place the template throughout your office, including the physician and staff lounges, so that the information becomes ingrained, Dr. Holt advised.
“Disasters can be very small and personal, so don’t think it can’t happen to you,” he said. “Physicians are in the business of being prepared. Why not prepare for disaster, too?” ENT TODAY
Include Managed Care Contracts in Your Plan
During an emergency, medical practices must maintain payer contracts so they can continue to bill for the clinical services they provide. If your otolaryngologists are providing life-sustaining care to victims in the wake of a disaster or if the practice site has suffered devastating physical damage, meeting the administrative requirements of your managed care agreements will be a low priority. As the community returns to normalcy, however, those details could create new burdens for your practice, according to James G. Fouassier, Esq., associate director in the department of managed care at Stony Brook University Hospital in N.Y.
If the federal government declares your community a disaster area, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services may issue a waiver relieving health care providers of certain documentation and technical submission requirements for claims related to Medicare and Medicaid, Fouassier said. A government agency also may suspend credentialing and licensing requirements for physicians from other states who travel to the disaster scene to assist with patient care.
There’s no guarantee, however, that the government will take either of these actions, and private payers won’t necessarily be obligated to do the same. By adding language to your managed care contracts to address disaster scenarios, you can require payers to pay for services, even if you’re temporarily forced to suspend standard billing practices, Fouassier said.