Professional administrators establish a bank account for the injured party’s medical settlement funds and pay all their healthcare needs on their behalf, but at significant discounts. The best administrators save the injured individual substantial sums of money on every healthcare bill. The discounts they can command can sometimes be up to 90% of that which was billed for the treatment!
Using an administrator to secure discounts can make the settlement funds last much longer which can result in the injured party potentially getting double, sometimes triple or more medical treatment from their settlement funds.
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“8 ‘Think Outside the Box’ Tactics to Settle Workers’ Comp Claims”
Traditionally, professional administrators have been thought to help only catastrophically injured individuals manage their care; however, they can be used for all cases that have future medical needs. Administrators have also been thought of to help with complex reporting requirements from the government for Medicare Set Aside accounts. These two uses of the service are still very relevant as they protect the injured party and everyone involved in the settlement as well as save them time, but for most injured individuals and their attorneys, the most powerful benefit is saving money for the injured party on medical bills. Let’s look at three examples of how this happens*:
Case Study Examples (Provided by Ametros)
Case Example 1
The money saved by the administrator stays in Beth’s account for her future healthcare needs. Beth now has more existing funds should she need another operation down the road. Without Ametros, Beth would have simply paid the bill and not have had the additional funds saved to put towards her future care needs. When Beth (injured individual), settled her case and needed a spinal cord stimulator implanted a year later, she faced some extremely daunting bills. The original billed amount of $132,777 was reduced to $47,551! That is a savings of over $80,000. In this case, much of the savings comes from reducing the bill to the appropriate fee schedule amount because her account was a Workers’ Compensation Medicare Set Aside (MSA).
Case Example 2
Roger settled his case in 2013 and recently needed a procedure done to replace his catheter implant and graft some tissue. The sticker price billed was $15,359. After review, his bill was reduced to $1,886, a savings of about $13,500.
For this procedure, Roger saved about 87% off the original billed charge.
Case Example 3
Discounts for medical costs do not just apply to large bills or individuals that have settled with an MSA.
Take Josefina for example. She settled her third-party liability case and two years later needed an X-Ray of her ankle for an unexpected complication.
The bill was reduced from the original total price of $529.00 to $201.83. In this situation, Ametros leveraged its facility network to save $327.17 for Josefina.
Final Thoughts
When you are assessing if a particular professional administrator is a good fit, you should ask them for a cost estimate: how much prescriptions, treatments and equipment will cost on their platform. Most will provide it for free. By doing this, you can easily determine lifetime costs and find the company that offers the biggest discounts and the highest savings.
If you are involved in settling a case where the injured party will have future medical costs, you can greatly assist the injured party by helping them not pay the sticker price for future medical costs. An administrator is a powerful ally and advocates for the individual after settlement.
*The medical bill examples shown are real bills with real discounts provided. The names of the clients and their personal identifying information has been redacted for privacy.
