Friday, December 16, 2022, 3:06 pm News Flash Archive

University of Mississippi Medical Center and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Mississippi announced this morning that they have settled their dispute, and all UMMC facilities and providers are now back in the BCBS network. UMMC's press release reads as follows:

Published on Friday, December 16, 2022

The University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi (Blue Cross) have reached an agreement.

Effective December 15, 2022, all UMMC facilities, physicians and other individual Professional Providers are fully participating Network Providers for all Blue Cross commercial health plans, including the Federal Employee Plan and Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans from other states.

Blue Cross and UMMC remain focused on their missions of serving Mississippians' health care needs.

The terms of the contracts are confidential.

UMMC was kicked out of the BCBS network back last April by BCBS when UMMC asked BCBS for a 30% rate hike, which BCBS refused to give.

Since then, patients with BCBS insurance policies were forced to seek non-emergency medical care elsewhere.

Generally, medical providers have little to no input as to how much insurance carriers will pay for medical services. Only very large medical providers are sometimes successful in forcing insurance carriers to up their payment rates. The largest insurers, the federal Medicare and state Medicaid programs, dictate what they will pay providers, with no possibility of negotiation by the medical providers.

But as of yesterday, UMMC is back in the BCBS network state-wide.

John Pittman Hey
The Taxpayers Channel

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