Tom Murphy

By Vanessa Orr

During this legislative session in Tallahassee, Florida legislators will be looking at a number of bills including S.B. 1344, which will benefit those in the medical field. The bill, introduced in early March, aims to provide additional money for physicians who serve as expert witnesses, at depositions, or as expert witnesses who review medical records.

The bill seeks to increase pay for expert witnesses or those at depositions from $200 per hour to $300 an hour, and to increase the fee for expert witnesses who review medical records from $200 a day to $300 a day.

“This is a welcome increase for doctors, and though it’s a large increase, the Legislature recognizes that it’s past due,” said Tom Murphy, Senior Vice President/National Health Care Practice
Danna-Gracey | Risk Strategies Company. “The current rates have been in place for quite some time.”

The bill also seeks to increase the maximum reimbursement for physicians up to 200 percent of the allowable Medicare reimbursement. Under workers’ compensation, for example, doctors typically get 110 percent of the Medicare maximum rate; that will increase to 200 percent. For surgical procedures, the amount will increase from 140 percent to 200 percent.

“It’s a big jump, but we believe the bill will pass, which is good news for any physician who treats workers’ comp patients,” said Murphy, adding that the single largest expense for workers’ comp claims—about 40 percent of the total—comes from physician expense.

From 2012 to 2021 in Florida, costs increased 15 percent on average for workers’ compensation treatment provided by a family practitioner/generalist. “While these costs have increased over the past 10 years or so, interestingly enough, surgeon and radiologist expenses have decreased,” said Murphy. “Unfortunately for those groups, governing bodies thought that their charges were higher than they needed to be and were increasing too rapidly.”

He added that things are looking up in the workers’ comp world, where rates have decreased consecutively in Florida for the past eight years. “It’s the one form of insurance in Florida where rates are going down while everything else is going up,” Murphy said.

A Word of Caution About Payroll Companies and PEOs

Speaking of workers’ comp, it’s important that medical practices be made aware of a recent trend concerning payroll companies and professional employer organizations (PEOs) when they are looking for help with their human resources and payroll needs.

“We’ve recently received an increase in calls from our clients who are concerned that they’ve lost their dividends after hiring a new payroll company or PEO,” said Murphy. “What they didn’t realize is that some of these companies—including some of the larger ones that we will not mention by name—have had them sign an Agent of Record form, which makes that company the agent for their workers’ comp policies with whatever insurance carrier they have.”

One of the drawbacks to this, according to Murphy, is that clients who have dividend programs with their current agents will lose those benefits when they switch to a new agent, in addition to losing the level of service they receive from those with whom they have long-term relationships.

“These forms may be part of a stack of papers that the medical practice administrator or doctor has to sign, and they may not even realize that they’ve agreed to it,” he added. “Oftentimes, when the insurance company advises us that their insurance is moving to a payroll company, we find that the client is completely unaware of it. Nine times out of 10 when a client calls us, they say that this is not what they intended to do and were not notified about the change.”

For more information, call Tom Murphy at (800) 966-2120 or visit www.dannagracey.com.