Cancer Therapy Advisor: The Unexpected Costs of Cancer Treatment: Out-of-Network Billing

“Beyond oncology, cancer patients often interact with specialists that have high rates of out-of-network billing, such as anesthesiologists, pathologists, radiologists, and assistant surgeons. “All of these specialties are generally specialties that the patients don’t choose,” said Nathan Shekita, an MBA/MPH candidate at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in an interview with Cancer Therapy Advisor. These specialists often work at facilities that are otherwise in network, so patients have no reason to suspect they’ll be treated by an out-of-network provider. In a recent Health Affairs study, Shekita and coauthors reported that at hospitals in 1 insurer’s network, claims from the aforementioned 4 specialties were out of network approximately 5% to 12% of the time.^5″ Read more at Cancer Therapy Advisor