Faced with an opportunity to advocate for patients, Rajeev Jain, MD, AGAF, is never afraid to speak up. He recently spoke out publicly against a major payer’s new advance notification process for colonoscopy and endoscopy procedures, cautioning it was a glidepath toward far-reaching prior authorization requirements.
UnitedHealthcare plans to collect a larger scope of data for this new policy, “which I fear will disrupt and deny patients’ access to lifesaving care,” Dr. Jain, a gastroenterologist with Texas Digestive Disease Consultants and a member of the American Gastroenterological Association’s (AGA) Prior Authorization Reform Task Force, wrote in an opinion piece in the Dallas Morning News.