Staywell Insurance will continue to provide services for CNMI referral patients in Manila, following the NMI Fund\u2019s decision to extend up to 12 months the third party administration contract of Hawaii Pacific Medical Referral.<\/p>\n
HPMR, which subcontracts Staywell for Manila patients, earlier said that it would terminate its partnership with Staywell by Dec. 1 if a longer extension period was not secured.<\/p>\n
\u201cEffective Dec. 1, 2005, we are terminating our arrangement with Staywell for access to their Philippine providers. This will allow us time to process and pay all claims from the Philippines prior to Dec. 31, 2005,\u201d said HPMR vice president and chief operating officer Thomas G. Cannon.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, if there is an extension of the agreement, all our actions to close down operations will cease,\u201d Cannon said in a Nov. 19 letter to Fund administrator Karl T. Reyes.<\/p>\n
HPMR\u2019s extended contract would expire on Dec. 31, but following a negotiation with the Fund board last week, the company is assured of up to one-year extension.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, Reyes said that a new extension agreement with HPMR was up for approval by both parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means that Staywell service in the Philippines continues. Although, we\u2019re not party to their agreement, the extension of our contract also extends HPMR\u2019s partnership with Staywell,\u201d said Reyes.<\/p>\n
The new extension agreement would call for a 90-day termination clause, giving both parties enough time to do transition work.<\/p>\n
The Fund had entered into a three-year contract with HPMR in 2001.<\/p>\n
During this period, HPMR said that it saved the CNMI government over $8 million through discounts and settled ineligible charges.<\/p>\n
Meantime, during the extension period, the Fund is expected to negotiate with potential third party administrators.<\/p>\n
The Fund will soon issue an RFP to seek a TPA.<\/p>\n
HPMR will remain the Fund\u2019s third party administrator until a better TPA is found.<\/p>\n
The Fund is advised to continue with a TPA rather than pursue privatization of the government\u2019s group health insurance.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s negotiating team recently rejected the proposal of SelectCare to privatize the program due to high rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Staywell Insurance will continue to provide services for CNMI referral patients in Manila, following the NMI Fund\u2019s decision to extend up to 12 months the third party administration contract of Hawaii Pacific Medical Referral.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95912\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}