Regulatory burden is on the rise yet again as practices struggle with prior authorizations, No Surprises Act compliance, and the Quality Payment Program, MGMA reports. Prior authorizations are still the top regulatory burden according to executives from group practices, while No Surprises Act compliance has debuted on the list this year as the second most […]
Although the Biden Administration claims this is the final regulation, there is evidence more is yet to come. The Biden administration released the final No Surprises Act regulation recently but advised healthcare professionals that this final version is not the final one and promised more to come. The latest final rule was narrowly focused on […]
The final surprise billing rules downgrade the weight the QPA has on out-of-network payment determinations and establishes documentation requirements for down coding situations. The Biden Administration has released final surprise billing rules implementing the No Surprises Act, a federal law enacted in January 2021 that protects patients from out-of-network medical bills when they seek care […]
The federal government probably won’t be raising Medicare reimbursements next year, and physician organizations are strongly objecting. At its Jan. 13 meeting, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), which advises Congress on financial issues pertaining to Medicare, recommended against increasing base payment rates to doctors in 2023. It justified its decision in part by noting […]
The federal No Surprises Act (NSA) prevented more than 2 million surprise medical bills for the first two months of 2022 – far more than federal regulators initially estimated. If the trend continues, the law will block more than 12 million surprise bills to patients this year, according to a projection from AHIP and the […]
The No Surprises Act came into effect in December 2021, potentially averting countless instances of unexpected billing claims within its initial two months of implementation. By May 24, 2022, the No Surprises Act had already thwarted over two million cases of surprise billing claims during its initial two-month span, as per a survey conducted by […]
After appealing the courts’ ruling on vacating a piece of arbitration within the No Surprises Act, HHS asks the court for a hold on its plea. HHS recently requested for a hold on its appeal of a Texas federal court ruling vacating parts of the independent dispute resolution (IDR) process in the surprise billing interim […]
During a National Stakeholder Call on January 18, 2022, Ellen Montz—Deputy Administrator and Director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)—announced that CMS had begun publishing state-specific letters (the “Enforcement Letters”) detailing anticipated Federal and state responsibilities with respect to enforcement of the […]
Effective January 1, 2022, new billing protections went into effect that have the goal of providing greater protections for patients against surprise medical bills. The Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury, and the Office of Personnel Management (collectively, the Departments) implemented these additional protections that are part of the No Surprises Act […]
In one of the biggest attempts by the federal government to combat surprise medical billing, Congress in late 2020 passed the No Surprises Act (NSA), which imposes a host of new transparency and coverage requirements for employer-sponsored group health plans. Many of the most significant coverage changes were required to be implemented on Jan. […]