Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas Needs to Pay Salina Regional Health Center Fair Rates

The contract between BCBSKS and SRHC ends on December 31, 2023.

How does BCBSKS pay hospitals and physicians in Kansas?

Every year, the largest health insurance company in the state, BCBSKS, sends every hospital and physician in the state a letter outlining the payment rates they will receive for the care they provide the following year. Hospitals and physicians must sign that offer by a certain date or the provider’s contract ends and they become an out of network provider. And every year, we have been told that SRHC Health Center is paid at rates similar to our comparable competitors – Lawrence, Stormont Vail, St. Francis, and Manhattan.

Unfortunately, we now know this isn’t true, and it hasn’t been true for years.

Publicly available price transparency now reveals that SRHC is paid substantially less than other hospitals. We are doing our part. BCBSKS must do its part through fair payment rates and fair treatment of hospitals and physicians. SRHC cannot continue to deliver top quality care in a rural part of the state while being paid as much as 50% less than comparable hospitals.

BCBSKS Can Fix This Problem

BCBSKS needs to pay SRHC fair rates.

We want to be a good value, and we want to be good stewards of your healthcare dollar. That doesn’t mean BCBSKS should take advantage of us. SRHC needs to be paid fairly, and that means BCBSKS making our payment rates equal to other comparable hospitals in the state.

We get it. No one wants to pay more for healthcare. We don’t want anyone in our community to pay more either. We know BCBSKS has the money without raising premiums one penny. In fact, BCBSKS’s reserves created by excess profits have increased $300 million in the last five years alone. That’s money that should have been used to pay SRHC, and possibly other providers too, fairly.

SRHC faces significant financial pressures, just like every other hospital in America right now. We’ve struggled to maintain a strong financial foundation, and make ongoing investments in our facilities and equipment, only to find out that BCBSKS has been financially starving SRHC. That has to change.

If BCBSKS refuses to pay us fairly, we will have no choice but to go out of network. This is practical need as well as a matter of principle.

We wish we didn’t have to share this news, and we wish we weren’t in this situation. Our promise is this: we will work hard, in good faith, to reach a new agreement with BCBSKS. We hope they will do the same.

For Employers

Your employees and their families deserve access to the best healthcare close to home. And BCBSKS has always offered the broadest network and greatest number of choices – until now.

If in-network access to SRHC is important to you, please talk to your insurance broker about other options for 2024. If you want to keep BCBSKS AND SRHC for 2024, please let BCBSKS know it’s important to you. We can only hope that they care about what their customers care about.

Please click here to view Letter to Employer.

Please click here to email BCBSKS.

For Brokers

Your customers deserve access to the best healthcare close to home. And BCBSKS has always offered the broadest network and greatest number of choices – until now.

If in-network access to SRHC is important to your customers, please talk to them about other options for 2024. If they want to keep BCBSKS AND SRHC for 2024, please let BCBSKS know it’s important to your customers and their employees. We can only hope that they care about what their customers care about.

Please click here to email BCBSKS.

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