The House health care bill passed Saturday 11/7/09 would: Require most Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine. Expand health care coverage to 36 million more people over the next decade. Require employers with payrolls above $500,000 to provide insurance to their employees or pay a fine. Prohibit insurance companies from … [Read more...]
We are receiving a lot of correspondence from our readers about Health Care Reform and Vision Care. For example, Eric White, OD has some major concerns about what is happening with the Health Care Reform Package and Vision Care. We are sharing Eric's concerns with you in case you want to take some action, get involved: "AOA's executive board … [Read more...]
How will Health Care Reform affect all of us in the optical industry? This will be an ongoing question for some time to come. The Vision Council has developed a memorandum to update their optical vision company members on the process and how the legislation may affect us as individuals and as optical business participants. We will be making sure … [Read more...]
DMEPOS Surety Bond- Opticians Are Not Exempt DMEPOS Surety Bond and Accreditation Requirement for Medicare Billing Privileges Per final regulations implemented by CMS, DMEPOS suppliers will be required to become accredited to obtain and maintain Medicare billing privileges by October 1st of this year, others may be required to post a surety … [Read more...]
One of the Blogs we subscribe to is EyeDocNewsBlog: Here is their update about billing codes: Modifiers Your New Friend- By Dr. Ari Weitzner If you are in private practice, you MUST be familiar with the following three modifiers- otherwise, you are losing lots of money: -24: This is added to the EXAM code (ie, 92012) during the post-op … [Read more...]
One of the newsletters we subscribe to is Eye Doc News, Ophthalmology Online- the following was a post by Dr. Ari Weitzner: "Over the years, I have received several requests from insurance companies for refunds, based on the fact that the patient’s subscription had expired. Problem is, of course, is that these requests come many months after … [Read more...]
We have some breaking news for VSP member doctors regarding updates to the Contact Lens Care Program, effective July 1, 2009. What's Changing? VSP is increasing the not-to-exceed pricing for new and refit patients by $20. The new pricing will range from $160-$190 for new and refit patients. Package pricing covers initial contact lens … [Read more...]
I have written about Flexible health spending and HSA's for Optical before as I think they are under utilized especially for Eyecare. I believe this is because awareness is so low so this is just a gentle reminder to help with that. Remember that many patients do not have optical insurance and don't know that they can pay for any kind of Eyecare, … [Read more...]
We received this email about a new California State Mandate for Medi-Cal Recipients and a possible Solution from Vision Plan of America. Apparently Vision Plan of America has the only approved individual vision plan in California, that will cover these persons. Once they enroll they can visit the panel providers for services. Vision Plan of … [Read more...]
From BNet May 17th-BNet Health Care The largest and most detailed national survey of physician practices about their costs of dealing with health plans found that they spend $31 billion a year on it. According to the study, which was published in Health Affairs, physicians spend about three hours a week interacting with insurers; clinical and … [Read more...]
Vision Service Plan announced Plan changes for VSP Optical Providers effective from July 1, 2009. These changes effect competitive product and reimbursement changes include: Eliminating the frame case payment Eliminating the patient supplied frame dispensing fee Increasing Value Added Discounts for Signature Plan patients to 30% only on … [Read more...]
The easiest way to deal with optical managed care is to think, the eyecare customer wants only what is in their plan. The hardest- change your thinking and perception to assume the customer wants the best. Instead of thinking it's a hassle, change the thinking to this is a great opportunity. The basic difference between optimists and pessimists … [Read more...]
I know that Health Care Reform is a huge political issue. Little did I know that if you google- health care reform you will get 159,000.000 results! If you google Health Care Reform and the Optical Industry, you get under 225,000 hits. (obviously, not much has been updated in 2009 on the optical industry) So I culled through the maze of articles … [Read more...]
How many times do you hear that a day? After awhile you may start believe that everybody wants only 'what's on their plan.' The first thing to do- is not believe it. The second thing is to ignore it. How many times have you personally said-"I'm not buying anything" and bought … [Read more...]
Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA's) are a good way for consumers to save on taxes but unlike Health Saving Accounts (HSA's) they cannot be rolled over in the next tax year. The most common type of FSA is used to pay for medical expenses not paid for by insurance; this usually means deductibles, co-payments, and coinsurance for the employee's health … [Read more...]
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