Our teams keep up proactive outreach to Methodist to lower costs and bring them back in network
Following the agreement in February that brought Methodist facilities back to our BlueCare networks, BlueCross has attempted to continue negotiations with Methodist Healthcare in good faith, seeking lower costs for our members and much-needed operational change to an outdated contract from 1996.
We’ve made consistent outreach attempts to Methodist throughout the contract negotiations, with our most recent on March 30. Methodist leaders finally responded on April 13 and indicated a willingness to begin negotiating once again. While this is good news, the fact remains that Methodist has been slow to respond at every opportunity. Instead, they’ve chosen to repeatedly express frustration in local opinion columns and protect their bottom line rather than work toward a solution. This has been especially disappointing as their lack of urgency only prolongs uncertainty for the patients they’ve voiced concern for in the past.
While Methodist’s allies are attempting to publicly pressure BlueCross into a deal, we remain committed to our responsibility to lower costs for our members and will work toward a deal that delivers high-quality care at an affordable price.
Additionally, our members continue to have access to a wide range of quality care, including services from other Memphis-area providers through our partnerships with Baptist Memorial Health Care, St. Francis Hospital and Regional One Health. Those providers offer most of the same services available at Methodist, especially for adults. And we’re diligently evaluating unique situations that involve requests to continue covering specialized care at Methodist Le Bonheur facilities.
We provided multiple offers for Methodist to bring Le Bonheur back in network, and they’ve refused on every occasion. It’s important to note Le Bonheur is in network with every other major insurance carrier, whether a preferred Methodist partner or not.
We will continue to make every effort to reach a deal that brings Methodist back into our networks, and we hope Methodist will work with us toward this goal.
Get all the facts about our negotiations with Methodist here.