"Turnabout is fair play"

Perhaps in response to the increasing practice of health plans in grading providers on practice performance measures, the American Academy of Family Practice (AAFP) is conducting a survey of its members asking them to assess health plans. Participating AAFP members will grade health plans in eleven categories, some of which are:

• Payment rates (whether they are adequate or too heavily discounted);
• Timeliness of payments (whether clean claims are paid within an appropriate amount of time);
• Accessibility, knowledge and responsiveness to your practice's concerns (whether payer representatives are easy to reach, helpful, etc.);
• Formularies (whether the information is easy to access, how often it changes, etc.);
• Prior authorization (how often it is required, how reasonable the decisions are, etc.);
• Physician performance data (whether data is accurate, valid and used fairly);
• The contracting process (whether the payer is willing to negotiate, disclose its fee schedule, etc.).

It will be interesting to see the results of this survey and if it prompts other specialty societies to conduct similar surveys.