Ghost networks of psychiatrists hinder patients’ access to care: STAT

“When I started my training in psychiatry, a senior doctor told me I should have a therapist of my own,” Jack Turban writes over at Stat, about seeking in-network and affordable psychiatric care. “He explained that it’s essential to understand myself so I can better understand my patients. That made sense, so I started calling a list of psychiatrists who supposedly took my insurance. Some of them were dead. Many weren’t taking new patients. Others didn’t take my insurance. I couldn’t find a single psychiatrist on the list to see me. It took months of networking for me to finally find a therapist. I later found out that my experience was commonplace, possibly deliberate, and that such inaccurate provider lists have a name: ghost networks or phantom networks.  In a recent study, researchers called 360 psychiatrists on Blue Cross Blue Shield’s in-network provider lists in Houston, Chicago, and Boston. Some of the phone numbers on the list were for McDonald’s locations, others were for jewelry stores. When the researchers actually reached psychiatrists’ offices, many of the doctors didn’t take Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance or weren’t taking new patients. After calling every number twice, the researchers were unable to make appointments with 74% of providers on the list. In a similar study among pediatric psychiatrists, researchers were unable to make appointments with 83% of the providers listed as in-network by Blue Cross Blue Shield.  My patients regularly tell me that this is not unique to Blue Cross Blue Shield and happens with most insurance providers. A 2016 survey by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services showed that it’s also a problem with other medical specialties. The numbers, however, never seem as bad for other specialties as they do for psychiatry. Maybe insurance companies don’t know their lists are inaccurate. Maybe they do but choose not to do anything about it. A more alarming possibility is that some companies intentionally keep the lists inaccurate to save money by preventing access to mental health care. After all, ghost networks benefit insurance companies: If it’s hard to find a provider who takes your insurance, it’s less likely you will access services that the insurer will have to pay for. That concern may be founded, given other recently revealed strategies used by insurance companies to avoid paying for mental health. As Massachusetts state Sen. Cindy Friedman, who has been working to get insurance companies to improve their provider lists, told me, “They’ve known about this for a long time and they haven’t done anything about it. It’s difficult not to assume that this kind of barrier is intentional.” Jack Turban, “Ghost networks of psychiatrists hinder patients’ access to care,” STAT.