Two East End Hospitals Reach Accord With Blue Cross

By Mitchell Freedman, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

May 15–Eastern Long Island and Southampton hospitals on the East End have agreed on a reimbursement schedule with Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, ending uncertainty for patients who faced the prospect of longer trips for nonemergency medical care.

But those hospitals, in addition to Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, are still negotiating with Oxford over the rate they are paid for patient care.

Oxford has warned its policy holders that, starting next month, they will have to pay out-of-network fees for routine treatment if they continue to use those hospitals.

The three are the only hospitals in the five towns that make up eastern Suffolk County.

The next closest hospitals are in Stony Brook, Port Jefferson and East Patchogue — adding at least a half-hour and possibly an hour or more to a one-way trip.

Paul Connor, president and chief executive of Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport and spokesman for the Eastern Suffolk Health Network, which has been negotiating the reimbursement rates, said yesterday’s agreement accomplished two goals: bringing Blue Cross payments in line with those already being paid to Peconic Bay Medical Center, and changing the contract so that it expires at all three hospitals at the end of August 2009.

“We came to terms this morning,” Connor said yesterday. “We avoided any type of network disruption. That was very positive. … We hope this will have a positive effect on Oxford as well.”

Still, Connor cautioned, while he hopes to resolve the Oxford contract before it expires in early June, negotiations could last two more weeks.

“We could go to the very end, as these negotiations sometimes do,” he said.

That would mean East End patients who would usually go to a local hospital for an elective procedure would have to pay out-of-network fees or go to a more distant hospital.

“Emergency procedures are covered in all hospitals, no matter what,” he added.

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