Today’s post requires that I share a bit of personal philosophy with the reader. This will be the less frightening parts of my psyche, so you can stop trembling.

To start out with a bracing dose of truth, I tend to live by very few rules, mainly because I fall back on survival instincts for most of my decision making process. This includes not dancing barefoot in poison ivy, realizing that I’m not cut out for living in the forest and stopping at the occasional red light. However, when it comes to what is referred to in more puritanical quarters as a moral code, my list of rules is rather short: don’t kill, don’t steal and don’t profit from other people’s bad luck (there’s one more multitiered rule that’s rather graphic and won’t be shared in this forum).

A good example of the application of these ideas is the fact that on the side, I’m a singer. My mother once suggested to me that there could be money to be made singing hymns at funerals and I found this idea incredibly revolting and insulting. It’s not enough that someone has just lost a loved one, but you’re going to stick a hand in the family’s pocket for the act of ushering the deceased into the next life with song? I find the very thought disgraceful.

As an extension of this rule, I have a deeply wired disdain for anyone who makes a living profiting from human misfortune. My hit list of occupational vultures includes funeral homes, pawn shops, payday and title loan stores and drug dealers. For purposes of this posting, let’s add an obvious one to the list: health insurance companies.

It is a well-documented reality that since the introduction of “managed care”, insurance companies are making out pretty well on the profit side. Hand in hand with this is the fact one study indicates that in 2007, 62% of all bankruptcies filed were due to outstanding medical expenses. Of that number, 80% had health insurance coverage. Given this statistic, why are we calling the purchased product “insurance”, as the very definition of this term suggests a contract that provides a guarantee against loss?

The effects of this same industry upon the provider community are no less damaging. Due to over 20+ years of deleterious contract terms, providers across the country are struggling with the costs of practice operation. With the proliferation of PPO plans that expand abhorrent fee schedules and payment rates to insurers across the country through the use of silent PPO’s and wraparound plans, the reimbursement playing field is evolving into a mine field.

It is my duty to inform the provider community that after six paragraphs, 400+ words and a brief discussion of funeral music, I’ve reached the point in this narrative where I can relay some good news; these mine fields have maps, and these would be your insurance carrier contracts.

Provider contracts make for interesting reading. What at first presentation will sound like an opportunity to expand your patient base to another insurance population can quickly shift in shape to something more resembling indentured servitude with the simple act of a signature. Knowing this, there is no longer any valid reason for not reviewing your insurance contracts on a regular basis, at the very least yearly.

In addition to the base contract, it is equally important to be wary of any and all amendments to that contract that are offered after initial contracting. I recently came upon a case where a physician had been under contract with an insurer for 4 years (with no legitimate review of the base contract language in that time span) and was sent an amendment that he dutifully signed which gave the insurer permission to share their pricing structure with other insurers. This had the effect of extending already negative contract terms far afield to insurers to which the provider had never been formally introduced.

Health care delivery finds itself on the brink of entering a world of increased physician cost and time investment. If a provider looks at his or her bottom line today and can see beyond all doubt that the current path is unsustainable, the best way to plug the income leak engulfing the practice is to go right to the source, which would be your insurance contracts. There are many directions that can be taken with regard to building a successful and sustainable medical practice. Given what we know about the singularly predatory nature of the modern insurance industry, the time has come to ask the most important question; where are your contracts taking you?