Carteret Health Care wants BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina to come to negotiating table
Carteret Health Care (CHC) is being unfairly battered by accusations from BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, related to the hospital’s contractual agreement with the state’s largest insurer, said CHC President Dick Brvenik.
Brvenik told the hospital’s “side of the story” Wednesday during the Chamber’s Legislative Luncheon gathering.
(One of the Chamber’s top Legislative Agenda priorities is to ensure that our local hospital has the capability to provide excellent service and care for residents and guests.)
“What BlueCross BlueShield is doing by going on the attack against us is both disruptive and confusing to patients and the public at large. It is detracting from our focus, which is to negotiate,” Brvenik said. “They have chosen to publicly and aggressively distort information about our pricing and our quality.
In a nutshell, independent sources show CHC’s pricing aggregate data is in the middle to lower than average range.
The hospital is competitively priced and is a high-value hospital, he said. It is not one of the most expensive hospitals in the state, as BlueCross BlueShield contends.
Also, CHC continues to receive high patient satisfaction scores and recently earned an “A” National Hospital Safety Score rating. “Only 31 percent of the nation’s hospitals got an ‘A’ grade,” Brvenik said.
“What we want is to negotiate a rebalanced contract (effective February 1, 2016) that is fair and reasonable,” he said. “We cannot accept a contract that threatens our financial stability as an independent hospital.”