Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Chesapeake Emergency Physicians Review Network Agreements

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Virginia (Anthem) and our affiliate HealthKeepers, Inc. continue to work collaboratively with physicians, hospitals, ancillary providers and other health care professionals to help ensure our members have uninterrupted access to dependable, high-quality healthcare at an affordable price. Anthem and HealthKeepers, Inc. attempt to negotiate reasonable fees for services that physicians and other health care professionals and facilities provide as part of our network contracts with these providers. In fact, keeping health care costs fair for everyone is one of our main responsibilities.

Chesapeake Emergency Physicians to leave Anthem’s networks June 1, 2019 

Recently, Anthem and HealthKeepers, Inc. received a contract termination notice from Chesapeake Emergency Physicians (CEP). CEP provides emergency medical (ER) services at Chesapeake Regional Medical Center in Chesapeake, Virginia. Effective June 1, 2019, Chesapeake Emergency Physicians is terminating its Anthem PAR/PPO and Anthem HealthKeepers professional provider agreements.

The termination of CEP’s HealthKeepers agreements also impacts HealthKeepers plans purchased on or off the Health Insurance Marketplace (also known as the exchange). The termination does not affect our Anthem HealthKeepers Plus (Medicaid/FAMIS and the Commonwealth Coordinated Care Plus plans), as CEP will remain a participant in these networks.

Please note that this notification ONLY applies to Chesapeake Emergency Physicians. Chesapeake Regional Medical Center and all other hospital-based service providers at the medical center remain part of our Anthem PAR/PPO and Anthem HealthKeepers networks.

Looking ahead

Anthem continues to be actively engaged in negotiations with Chesapeake Emergency Physicians. Our top priority during these negotiations is to protect consumers’ access to affordable healthcare. As we negotiate with providers, we try to strike a balance between protecting affordability and providing a broad network of providers to create choices for our consumers, which can take time.

Any time we enter into negotiations, we are working on behalf of our consumers and customers to not only protect affordability, but to change contractual relationships with providers to respond to recent changes in the marketplace that will allow us to offer healthcare consumers flexible networks and innovative, more cost-effective benefit designs.

Meanwhile, please continue to visit this site for the latest news and information on this topic.