The New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Co. praised changes to the state's Personal Injury Protection fee schedule, which limited the amount ASCs can collect for such cases to 300 percent of Medicare reimbursement, and indicated an intent to push harder for more medical cost reduction measures, according to comments from the director of corporate communications for NJM published in a NJBIZ report and analysis from Jeffrey Shanton, chair, Advocacy and Legislative Affairs Committee, New Jersey Association of Ambulatory Surgery Centers.
The comments came from a NJBIZ report discussing NJM's announcement of its issuing of $45.7 million in dividends to its personal auto insurance policyholders, a decline from 2009 which NJM attributed to the recession and an increase in medical costs.
The report shared comments from Patrick Breslin, director corporate communications for NJM, who called for more measures to reduce medical costs.
DOBI has indicated that it will issue for comment a new PIP Fee Schedule in the first quarter of 2011, according to Mr. Shanton. "The genesis is the perception by DOBI that the PIP carrier industry is not making enough profit which, in my opinion, is due to increased competition from new, aggressive carriers coming into the state market," he says. "This will certainly be another battle to be waged, as it would be almost impossible to think that a new PIP Fee Schedule would not entail reductions from the current one."
Read the NJBIZ report with the attack on New Jersey surgery centers.
Learn more about the New Jersey Association of Ambulatory Surgery Centers.
Read more about New Jersey surgery centers:
- New Jersey Out-of-Network Bill Fails in Committee
- New Jersey ASCs Face New Tactics by Payors to Eliminate OON Services
- New Jersey Regulators Approve Penalties for PIP Patients Using OON Centers