The CHRISTUS Southeast Texas PHO (“PHO”) is a local network of physicians and hospitals designed to provide access to health care services for local employers, national managed care plans, and insurance carriers. It was formed as a community physician organization to meet the challenges of managed care and to collaborate with the CHRISTUS Health Southeast Texas Hospitals in order to offer a wide array of health care services across seven counties in Southeast Texas.

This web site is designed primarily as a key operational resource to assist our PHO members in dealing with the managed care plans contracted through the PHO. Please browse our site to learn more about our participating physicians, hospitals, managed care plans, and our services. If you have any questions, would like additional information, or have ideas on how we can improve this web site, please contact our office at (409) 899-7791.

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HOT TOPICS!

PHYSICIAN DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES
Any changes that need to be made to a physician’s profile, i.e. address, health plan options, TIN (must submit updated copy of W-9) must be submitted in writing. The notice must include the physician’s name, changes requested as well as an effective date. PLEASE NOTE: Health plans require a minimum of 30 days advance notice.

FEE SCHEDULE REQUEST POLICY UPDATE
Due to increased volume of requests and an internal audit of our last two year’s fee schedule production, as of June 1, 2009, the PHO amended its fee schedule distribution policy as follows:

Any current member’s office may request a fee schedule for any/all PHO contracts with which their physician(s) participates for up to 25 CPT codes per service category (E&M, Surgery, Pathology, etc) or no more than 200 CPT codes total. A current list of the CPT codes for which you bill and are requesting must be sent in writing in an Excel document with your fee schedule request. This can be emailed to stephanie.benkert@christushealth.org Additionally, we request a minimum of seven (7) days turn-around time for a completed fee schedule and will complete one fee schedule annually per office unless payor updates/changes necessitate. We are happy to continue providing allowable information to you and ask for your cooperation with the policy above. Thank You.

FIRST HEALTH NEW FEE SCHEDULE DELAY
The First Health/Coventry fee updates scheduled to go in to place on 4/1/2009 were delayed and were in fact effective 6/1/2009 (June 1, 2009). You should continue to receive payments according to the previous fee schedule through 5/31/09. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.