As the healthcare industry focuses on cutting costs, narrow provider networks designed to deliver value are taking hold as a widespread business practice.
With their prominent cost-containing role in the new public exchanges, narrow provider networks have been the object of persistent healthcare industry hand-wringing this year.
But narrow networks are not only a well-established industry practice, thrifty consumers are also open to them, according to Joseph Berardo Jr., president and CEO of New York, NY-based MagnaCare, a health plan that features a provider network with 70,000 locations in the New York and New Jersey markets.
"There's been slowly, a narrowing of networks, quietly over time," he says, noting that narrow networks are appealing to small group plans. "There's a paradigm shift here. Small groups are price-sensitive."
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Source: Health Leaders Media
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