I really believe a lot of this comes down to poorly automated systems and people not allowed to go off script … and insurers have no reason to change this.
When there’s a claim it gets entered into the insurer system by procedure code. It’s only decided based on what procedure code is recognized by the system. The peon deciding to reject it likely has no power to say otherwise nor incentive to. Even when they do ask for a doctors opinion, do you really think he reads all the case notes, or even has access to them, or has time to read them, or incentive? Nope, just whatever codes were entered into the system. You read a lot about issues where procedures have to be recoded for insurance, but I’ll bet many more of the rejects are as simple as the code not supporting the treatment and no one at the insurer looking farther. This is more a form of institutional incompetence but insurers have a profit motive in maintaining this incompetence