Clinic contracts: insurers, informed consent and healthcare advertising
Nextica Law & Tax reviews and negotiates the contracts that hold a clinic together: agreements with insurers and mutual funds and their fee schedules, contracts with collaborating practitioners and equipment suppliers, and the library of treatment-specific informed consent forms required by Law 41/2002 on patient autonomy. Also the prior review of campaigns and the website under the Catalan healthcare advertising regime of Decree 107/1995.
You live off three insurers that impose their contract and off marketing the authorities can stop. Both are reviewed beforehand, not afterwards.
What's included
1. Reviewing contracts with insurers and mutual funds
fee schedules, payment terms, exclusivity, panel audits and exit conditions.
2. Contracts with collaborating practitioners, with the arrangement chosen deliberately rather than by habit, because everything employment- and tax-related hangs off it.
3. Contracts with equipment and laboratory suppliers, with warranties, maintenance and liability for the outcome of outsourced work.
4. A library of informed consents by treatment, drafted for what the clinic actually does rather than generic.
6. Terms for quotes and patient financing, with the pre-contractual information the consumer must receive.
7. An annual review of the contract portfolio and of what share of turnover depends on each insurer.
THREE INSURERS AND A STANDARD-FORM CONTRACT
A clinic living off an insurer panel negotiates little and depends a lot, and the paper where that is decided is almost never read in full.
A generic informed consent
it is the first line of defence against a claim and only works if it matches the treatment actually performed, with the specific risks and alternatives explained. A single template for the whole portfolio evidences nothing.
Law 41/2002 on patient autonomyA campaign published without reviewing the healthcare advertising regime
in Catalonia advertising certain healthcare services is subject to its own regime, and clinics live off marketing.
Decret 107/1995Dependence concentrated on a few insurers with no agreed exit terms
when the fee schedule is revised downwards or the contract is not renewed, the clinic discovers at the same time how much that panel weighed and how little room it has to react.
Frequently asked questions
Is a generic informed consent form enough for every treatment?
No, and it is one of the points that weighs most when there is a claim. Law 41/2002 requires information about the specific procedure, its typical risks, the patient's individual risks and the alternatives. A single document covering the whole service range does not evidence that the required information was given in that case. What works is a library of consent forms by treatment, updated whenever the technique changes.
Do I need authorisation to advertise my clinic in Catalonia?
Healthcare advertising is subject to its own regime in Catalonia, with prior administrative control of certain content, on top of general advertising rules and unfair competition rules. In practice this means the campaign, the website and the social profiles are reviewed before publication: pulling an advert already out there costs more than correcting it beforehand, and the regional authorities do impose penalties for this.
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