Roughly 65,000 Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas members will lose in-network access to CHI's Texas locations starting tomorrow as negotiations stall over a dispute in health care costs.
The hospital network and insurer announced in October that they would part ways. CHI St. Luke’s CEO Doug Lawson said at the time that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, along with another insurance carrier, Molina, were paying the hospital system "significantly" less than their competitors for the same services.
“St. Luke’s focus is on receiving reasonable reimbursement from Molina and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas and preserve our ability to provide affordable healthcare,” Lawson said in October.
A Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas spokesperson said it has made another offer to CHI St. Luke’s and is waiting for a response.
“The clock is ticking toward Dec. 16,” said Blue Cross spokesperson James Campbell.
The contract’s end affects all Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas plans except for MyBlue Health, a plan that launched in Harris County in 2020 and whose contract with CHI St. Luke’s doesn’t expire until 2021.
After the termination, patients would be out-of-network at sixteen hospitals in Houston and East Texas.
CHI St. Luke’s joins a growing train of health systems in Houston who have announced splits with major insurance carriers. In 2019, UnitedHealthcare said it would drop Houston Methodist and Cigna said Memorial Hermann would leave its network over disputes on rising health care costs and reimbursements.
Both hospitals extended their contracts for several additional months and ended up negotiating new multi-year contracts during the pandemic.
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December 15, 2020 at 05:00PM
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65,000 Blue Cross patients to lose in-network access at CHI St. Luke's tonight - Houston Chronicle
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