On Thursday, May 6th, we held our webinar entitled “Patient Access to Care and Treatments in the Cost Shifting Era.” Dr. Ralph McKibbin discussed the importance of programs put into place for cost and utilization management within health insurance policies. However, they can also have negative effects.  Some of these include:

• Patients with serious, life-threatening, and chronic conditions are threatened by out-of-pocket spending.
• Access and adherence to necessary treatment is limited with worse health outcomes.
• Cost sharing creates a two-class system for prescription medications.
• Patients are prevented from accessing necessary treatment, even though their provider feels it is required.    

You can learn about how to avoid these negative consequences and the importance of safeguarding the decisions made within the patient-provider relationship in Dr. McKibbin’s paper.

Download the full paper here.

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