athenahealth Annual PayerView Report Ranks Human Top Plan Again For Providersa

by Clive Riddle, June 6, 2014

athenahealth recently released their 2014 PayerView Report, which ranks “commercial and government health insurers according to specific measures of financial, administrative, and transactional performance. These measures provide an objective, comparative benchmark for assessing how easy or difficult it is for providers to work with payers.” For the second year in a row, athenahealth found Humana the top performing plan out of 148 plans analyzed.

Here are their rankings for local and national Commercial plans:

1. Humana
2. HealthPartners
3. BCBS of MA
4. Cigna
5. Group Health Cooperative
6. Capital Blue Cross - PA
7. Care First BCBS - DC
8. Unicare
9. BCBS of NC
10. Neighborhood Health Plan

Four major insights were provided by athenahealth regarding the report:

(1) “ Medicaid's Lackluster Performance Continues - For the 9th straight year, Medicaid performed worse than commercial plans and Medicare on key metrics such as Days in Accounts Receivable (DAR), Denial Rates, and Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA) transparency. “

(2)  “Providers' Burden to Collect on Claims Varies Widely - PayerView data indicates that provider collection burden (PCB), measured as the percent of charges transferred from the primary insurer to the next responsible party after the time of service, is increasing slightly. ..PayerView results reveal that Medicare and many Blue Cross Blue Shield plans require providers to collect large percentages of payments from patients, while Medicaids require minimal collection. “

(3) ”Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans Pay Providers the Fastest - As a category, Blue Cross Blue Shield plans reimburse providers most quickly, with an average of three fewer Days in Accounts Receivable compared to all other payers. On this measure, Blue Cross Blue Shield plans represent 20 of the top 25 performers.”

(4) “Commercial Payers Offer the Most Efficient Enrollments - While Medicaid enrollment proves particularly burdensome, national commercial payers' enrollment proves simplest. “

athenahealth notes that rankings from their report “are derived from athenahealth's athenaNet® database, which to date includes more than 52,000 providers across 50 states. The 2014 PayerView data set analyzes 108 million charge lines and $20 billion in health care services billed in 2013.”