Compensation for time spent fighting insurance companies advocating for patients’ benefits

Nevada law requires healthcare providers to argue with insurance companies over patient care denials if the healthcare providers feel the care that was denied is in the best interests of their patients. There is no limit to the amount of work the insurance company may request of the healthcare provider in order to sufficiently argue that the care is warranted. The information requests from insurance companies are essentially busy work asking the healthcare providers to summarize information the insurance companies already have in their possession, since they required this information when they paid for the patients’ prior care. The intent appears to be to deter healthcare providers from advocating for their patients in order to save the insurance company money.

Since the requests from insurance companies have now become ridiculously burdensome, (sometimes requiring 30 minutes of work to complete the supplemental information summary to approve a $30 study), new laws must be put in place to deter insurance companies from this abuse of process, and this tactic used to deny their patients care by raising hurdles to healthcare delivery personnel. Insurance companies must be required to compensate healthcare providers for the time it takes them to respond to insurance company information requests.