Farmington, Conn.-based UConn John Dempsey Hospital will surrender over $1 million in facility fees billed to patients who undergo skin cancer treatment by converting the procedure from a hospital-based service to an office-based one, according to HartfordBusiness.com.
During the Mohs procedure, physicians surgically remove basal cell carcinomas on the head and neck. Physicians from the UConn Medical Group performed over 7,000 Mohs procedures in the last financial year, which generated $1.3 million in facility fees for Dempsey.
Mohs patients would receive bills from both the medical group and the hospital, which both confused and frustrated many of them and could have dissuaded others from undergoing the highly effective procedure. So UConn converted the service line to an office-based service and eliminated the facility fee.
"This evolved over the past few years as providers received negative feedback from patients and community physicians pertaining to the receipt of two bills for what they perceived as a single episode of service," UConn said in its application to eliminate the fees.
"This change is consistent with what we see across the country — an increasing tendency to move toward office-based billing whenever feasible to help reduce the costs of care," said Chris Hyers, chief communications officer for UConn Health.