Two Tulsa hospitals say they will not accept certain health plans

Just when you thought Medicare coverage couldn't get more confusing, two Tulsa hospitals have stepped in and muddied the waters even more. Two full page ads in a Tulsa newspaper say St. Francis and

Tuesday, March 21st 2006, 10:08 am

By: News On 6

Just when you thought Medicare coverage couldn't get more confusing, two Tulsa hospitals have stepped in and muddied the waters even more. Two full page ads in a Tulsa newspaper say St. Francis and St. John will not accept certain types of coverage.

News on 6 reporter Jennifer Loren says this has to do with Medicare Part D. It opened the door to new health care plans that combine HMOs and prescription drug benefits. So when people wanted both, many of them enrolled with some companies new to the Tulsa area, including the ones listed in the paper.

According to the ads neither St. John or St. Francis will accept those patients who enrolled with Humana or Sterling as their HMO. The News on 6 tried to contact both hospitals Tuesday to find out why. St. John said they had no comment and St. Francis never returned our calls.

According to Medicare experts, the hospitals do have the right to choose which plans they will accept, even if they don't say why. That left at least one potential patient upset. Jayne Mitchell: â€œIt's very alarming and very disturbing that they would make it so that a senior citizen could not select any insurance plan that they want to select."

If you have enrolled with those companies, you can still go to Hillcrest, SouthCrest and Tulsa Regional Hospitals, but if you want to go to St. Francis or St. John you'll have to change plans, which you can do up until the May 15th deadline.