Frisbie CEO Felgar steps up attack on Anthem

Frisbie CEO Al Felgar waves a New Hampshire map showing the 10 hospitals, including Frisbie, that were excluded from the ACA health exchange by Anthem. (Harrison Thorp photo)

Frisbie Memorial Hospital CEO Al Felgar sharpened his attacks on for-profit insurance giant Anthem on Thursday as he accused the lone Granite State ACA provider of funneling Rochester-area residents to Wentworth Douglas Hospital in Dover as a purely profit-making venture.
He also blasted Anthem executives for not giving detailed accounts as to how they chose to exclude 10 New Hampshire hospitals, including Frisbie, from the health exchange.
“Anthem will not discuss how they arrived at their narrow network,” Felgar said. “They chose the winners and losers.”
He labeled Anthem’s move as greed driven at the expense of patient services in its move to push potential Rochester-area ACA subscribers to the Dover hospital.
“Anthem is looking to move volume to Wentworth Douglas,” Felgar said during a breakfast meeting at the Frisbie Conference Center where about a hundred had gathered for a talk on how the ACA will impact small business owners.
The event was sponsored by Holy Rosary Credit Union and featured speakers from a New Hampshire risk management firm.
Felgar said he’d offered to take the same deal Wentworth Douglas accepted as part of the health exchange which will function under so-called Obamacare, but so far Anthem has rejected his offer.
“I knew I could live with any deal Wentworth got. This is all about profit (for Anthem),” he said. “Patients are now just ‘volume.’”
Felgar reminded everyone that when Frisbie is blocked from the exchange, so are all its 80 or so doctors who work for the hospital.
He also said the exclusion is a direct threat on the economic viability of Frisbie and threatens the jobs of the approximately 1,000 people it employs.
He said it also threatens patient health, adding when people have farther to go to the doctor, they tend to go less.
Felgar also noted it impacts Frisbie’s satellite providers like walk-in clinics in Barrington and Ossipee.
One of the greatest frustrations, Felgar added, is that Frisbie is ranked near the top of the heap of New Hampshire hospitals when it comes to patient care and cost comparisons. He pointed out that Consumer Reports gave FMH a top score in hospital safety, and second in the state for surgical safety.
It was also listed on insurance provider Harvard Pilgrim’s Honor Roll the past four years.
Another state grading system gave it a B for overall hospital safety the past year. Only one hospital in the state ranked higher.
Meanwhile, a federal study showed Frisbie’s patient cost comparison at 22 percent less than other Seacoast hospitals.
The New Hampshire Bureau of Insurance last week agreed to meet with Felgar to discuss his concerns about Frisbie’s exclusion, but whether any reconsideration of Frisbie’s plight would provoke any positive movement is uncertain, Felgar said after the meeting.
Felgar noted that even if the hospital were excluded from the exchange this year, that there would be no curtailment of hospital services or physician availability, at least for the near future.