business
MultiPlan clarifies re-credentialing letters
■ After complaints from physicians and organized medicine, the independent PPO sent a bulletin to physicians explaining their earlier faxed request.
By Emily Berry — Posted Feb. 25, 2010
Thousands of physicians across the country were surprised by letters from MultiPlan and an unfamiliar vendor that arrived recently, requesting information the plans said it needed to re-credential doctors.
The trouble was, many of the 60,000 physicians who got the letters were sure they were not credentialed with MultiPlan in the first place.
MultiPlan, based in Waltham, Mass., describes itself as an independent PPO. It is often used as a secondary, or "rental" network by other larger insurers looking for discounts outside of their own networks.
After the American Medical Association and Connecticut State Medical Society contacted MultiPlan looking for answers about the letters, MultiPlan released a bulletin for physicians explaining what might have led to the confusion.
First, MultiPlan hired a third-party vendor, Medversant, to send faxes to physicians who hadn't responded to mailed packets sent earlier. The Medversant name was unfamiliar to some physicians.
Second, the bulletin explained, some physicians weren't aware that MultiPlan purchased Private Healthcare Systems and other smaller PPO networks the physician might have been contracted with in the past. (MultiPlan bought PHCS in 2006.) That meant some physicians didn't recognize the MultiPlan name either.
Also, because of dissolved independent practice associations or physicians leaving groups, some physicians who were once contracted through their group ended up receiving a re-credentialing letter at their new offices, the bulletin said.
The AMA and the CSMS said they welcomed MultiPlan's clarification.
