
UW Medicine and Aetna reach new contract agreement
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UW Medicine and Aetna reach new contract agreement
UW Medicine announced the contract deal on Thursday. The prior two-year agreement expired on June 1. About 53,000 people covered by Aetna had at least one appointment at UW Medicine since 2023. The agreement covers care at Harborview Medical Center, UW Medical Center-Northwest and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. The contract will retroactively reimburse all care since June 1, the hospital system said. The two health care organizations had been negotiating over reimbursement rates for months, both insisting the other side was being unfair.
UW Medicine announced the contract deal on Thursday, almost a month after the prior two-year agreement expired on June 1. About 53,000 people covered by Aetna had at least one appointment at UW Medicine since 2023 and were notified about the ongoing negotiations, according to the Seattle hospital system.
“We are delighted to have reached a new agreement with Aetna that is fair, sustainable and in the best interests of our patients,” UW Medicine CEO Dr. Tim Dellit said in a statement.
Dellit added: “We need fair reimbursement rates from our commercial payors to keep our hospitals operating and to serve as the primary safety net health care system for our state.”
Monica Prinzing, a spokesperson for CVS Health, which merged with Aetna, also said the company was “pleased” to reach a deal.
“We know how important it is for our members to maintain access to the health care providers they know and trust and we take seriously our responsibility to negotiate provider agreements that preserve that access while keeping health care costs affordable,” Prinzing said in a statement Sunday.
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The agreement covers care at Harborview Medical Center, UW Medical Center-Northwest, UW Medical Center-Montlake, UW Medicine Primary Care and Urgent Care clinics, and physician services at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. The contract will retroactively reimburse all care since June 1.
Before coming to an agreement, the two health care organizations had been negotiating over reimbursement rates for months, both insisting the other side was being unfair. While UW Medicine argued Aetna’s rates were lower than any other insurance companies’ on the market, the insurer said the hospital was demanding “unreasonable” increases.
Had UW Medicine and Aetna not come to a compromise, many patients would have either faced higher out-of-pocket costs or had to transfer their care to a different provider that was in-network.
Some Aetna-insured patients would have been eligible for “transition-of-care” coverage, which applied on a case-by-case basis to people who are pregnant or actively receiving treatment, such as cancer care, UW Medicine said.
UW Medicine encouraged patients with questions to reach out at HealthInsContracts@uw.edu.
Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/uw-medicine-and-aetna-reach-new-contract-agreement/