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May 13, 2024
Cigna tracks every minute that its staff doctors spend deciding whether to pay for health care. Dr. Debby Day said her bosses cared more about being fast than being right: “Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers,” Day said...
Dr. Debby Day, a former medical director at Cigna, alleged that the company prioritized speed over accuracy in reviewing patient cases, pressuring doctors to make quick decisions which often resulted in wrongful denials of coverage. She highlighted the company’s use of productivity dashboards to track the number of cases each doctor handled, pushing for higher volumes regardless of the complexity or necessity of thorough review. Day emphasized that nurses' work, outsourced to the Philippines, often contained errors, further complicating the decision-making process. Despite Cigna's claims that it values thorough and accurate reviews, internal practices and pressures suggested otherwise, leading to her departure in 2022 after nearly 15 years with the company. Cigna denied these accusations, stating that they do not incentivize denials and are reassessing the use of their productivity metrics due to the confusion they caused.