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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. 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 15 cents on the dollar and reimbursement is less than half the amount of our costs. 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 15 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.
 

BCBS of Florida is currently reviewing MicroSpine as a potential provider and we are hopeful that we will be in network soon. We understand cost issues with people in today's economy and thus being "in network" reduces your costs and hopefully this will be resolved so that you can utilize our services with network rates. Until then, we often will accept the allowable for BC/BS plans. Please call and ask us.
 

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