“Why Alabama Doctors are Choosing Consolidation Over Independence,” Birmingham Business Journal Featuring Erin Lyon

In a recent article published by Birmingham Business Journal, Erin Lyon identified the two main pain points of Alabama’s health care ecosystem: the lack of negotiating power for providers as a result of a monopolized health insurance market and a decrease in federal funding as a result of denying expanded Medicaid support for Alabama residents.

“There’s not competition in the marketplace here – not from the consumer side of purchasing insurance and not rom the provider side of negotiating reimbursement rates with the insurance carrier,” Lyon shared. “In a system like this, small practice groups are favored because they don’t rely on large patient volume and negotiated reimbursement rates to survive like these large groups would.”

Lyon continued on to elaborate on how this strain affects health care access however points to physician groups serving those rural communities effected as a solution.

“I think the consolidation trend is absolutely going to continue at an accelerated rate; I’m concerned about how that’s going to impact health care, both for the providers and for the community,” Lyon said. “These rural physicians are doing such a great job providing care in these environments where large national chains have no interest in coming, and they’re not out for profitability – if they were, they’d be somewhere else.”

Subscribers may read the full article here.

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