The contract between RWJBarnabas Health, which includes Jersey City Medical Center, and insurance carrier Aetna will expire April 22, according to the March 17 letter the company sent to its subscribers who had been treated at a Barnabas hospital in the past year.
The disagreement is over reimbursement rates, Aetna spokesman Walter Cherniak Jr. said Monday, as reported in NJ Advance Media.
Aetna is the second-largest health insurance company in New Jersey. The carrier notified 45,000 policy holders that contract negotiations will have to improve soon with Barnabas, the state’s largest hospital network, or else patients will have to pay more expensive out-of-network rates or select another hospital.
Cherniak claimed that RWJBarnabas, which is affiliated with 11 acute care hospitals, wants “a significant rate increase we do not believe can be supported in the market.”
Cherniak said the 1,267 doctors who hold admitting privileges exclusively at RWJBarnabas hospitals are also affected. Patients requiring hospital care would have to find another doctor if their physicians could not quickly obtain admitting privileges at other hospitals.
RWJ Barnabas Health’s spokeswoman Ellen Greene, called Cherniak’s letter a “routine communication that HMOs and insurers must send to participants 30 days before the contract expires.”
“RWJBarnabas Health and Aetna continue to negotiate with the desire to create a new contractual agreement,” Greene’s statement said. “It is our goal and expectation that a new agreement will be reached with Aetna before our current contract expires on April 22. Aetna patients can still receive services at all RWJBarnabas Health facilities as contract negotiations continue.”
Aetna and Barnabas Health reached an impasse over contract negotiations two years ago, but the two sides reached a deal three days before the contract expired.
Date: March 27, 2017