Do You Have a Copy of Your PPO Contracts?

Keep electronic copies of all contracts, encrypted and backed up, for easy access to vital information on your rights and obligations, ensuring seamless practice management.

Important Link for Today’s Video:

Additional videos on PPO Network Contracts

Advertisement

Transcript:

Recently, we’ve received a number of phone calls from our members, asking questions about how to contact specific insurance companies, and what are their rights under their contracts. And additionally, things like, how do I contact them in writing if I decide that I want to leave a particular network? Fortunately, all of these things, and all of these contact pieces of information, and the requirements are all listed within your contract. Unfortunately, what we’re finding is some of our providers aren’t able to find those initial contracts that they may have signed several decades ago. Here’s what I need to tell you, you want to make sure that you continue to maintain a copy of all of your PPO contracts.

Now, first of all, you want to maintain a copy of all of your contracts, the lease for your property, and PPO agreements, if you’ve hired someone to do independent contract work, all of those contracts are critically important to your business, how you operate, and the requirements that you have under that contract, and what your rights and responsibilities are. So you need to make sure that you keep a copy of that. Now that can be copied and kept in a number of different fashions. You know, there are a lot of attorneys that still recommend that you keep a copy of those documents in physical form, but you are able to go ahead and make those electronic and keep electronic copies of those. Now, in that regard, you want to make sure that it is in an encrypted format and that it is backed up, not just sitting on your local hard drive, you want to make sure that it is fully encrypted, and that it also has redundant backups as a part of your overall security within your practice in regards to your electronic documents.

Additionally, from time to time, the insurance companies probably are sending you updates to that contract, you need to make sure that you’re keeping those as well. Last most of those contracts also refer to other key documents, for example, provider manuals or medical policies. We also recommend that you keep a copy of those documents as they change over the years. We always have a reference point for anything that comes into question throughout time, based on that time period, but most importantly, it gives you the access to the information you need today. It gives you that contact information it gives you the mailing address, it gives you potential contact phone numbers that you can utilize to be able to help you in your practice. These are important documents. You always want to keep a copy of your contracts, whatever you do, don’t discard them, and don’t devalue them today for what you may need into the future. Please keep a copy of your contracts. We’ll catch you next week.