PAGE LEADERS JOIN WITH OTHER EDUCATION GROUPS TO BRING MEMBER CONCERNS ON SHBP TO GOVERNOR
PAGE leaders joined leaders of other education associations in a meeting December 6 with Abel Ortiz, health policy advisor to Governor Perdue. The purpose of the meeting was to get an update on progress being made across the state developing a network of providers for the State Health Care Benefit Plan (SHBP), to share with him the numerous concerns of state employees over the selection of United Health Care (UHC) as the administrator of the SHBP, and to gather additional information and provide feedback to prevent recurrence of such a contentious situation in the future.
Ortiz said that 13,000 doctors were now on the network and that negotiations were underway with another 16,000. He said that a total of 138 hospitals were now in the network. He added that the major hospitals in Albany and in Dalton were in the process of signing onto the network. He termed the current contract UHC is offering �friendly� to doctors and said that if individual doctors now refuse to sign up with UHC it is because of reasons other than the contract itself.
He admitted that the program thus far had �stumbled� at its start but that he and staff at the Department of Community Health (DCH) along with staff from the office of the State Insurance Commissioner would carefully monitor the contract with United Health Care to insure quality of service and program administration.
He reiterated his and the governor�s position that state employees across the state should have equal access to all medical services provided for in the state contract. It was recommended that a special hotline be developed to respond to questions and concerns that will develop over the first few months of the plan. Ortiz said that this was an idea he would consider.
An additional recommendation was that Ortiz and staff members at DCH develop improved communications systems that would provide state employees with a better understanding of the health care decision making process. Specific items to be clearly communicated included the responsibilities and missions of the DCH, the roles of the governor and his health policy advisor in health care decision making, as well as a more comprehensive review of the factors which drive that decision making.
Ortiz, noting that the state had chronically under funded the SHBP, said that the deficit was growing large enough to threaten other state spending programs. Those present agreed that there is a need for the entire SHBP program, its processes and major players, to be made much more transparent to the general public and more importantly to its hundred of thousand constituents � state employees and their families.
A specific problem noted in the meeting was the fact that some state employees missed the open enrollment deadline due to computer network problems and were now being assessed a tobacco surcharge as a penalty. Ortiz said they would consider such cases on an individual basis to see if the surcharge would be eliminated.
