Category Archives: No Surprises Act

Is a ‘cash pay revolution’ coming for hospitals?

Posted on by • Posted in Cash Payment, Health Insurance Industry, Health System, High Deductible Health Plans, High Prices, Hospital, Hospital Industry, No Surprises Act, Price Transparency, Rev Cycle Management, Revenue Cycle • Leave a comment

https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2022/10/19/cash-pay-hospitals

Amid new price transparency laws and growing consumer demand, more hospitals are adding cash pay options for certain health care services instead of just accepting insurance, Nora Tepper writes for Modern Healthcare—and some hospital officials say these offerings are “only going to go up” in the future.

How an ‘anomaly’ is becoming more common

Providers advertising cash pay rates for their services used to be considered an “anomaly,” Tepper writes. Now, the No Surprises Act, the federal price transparency law, and changing consumer expectations may make cash-only payments for health care services more common.

“The market is going there,” said Larry Van Horn, associate professor of management, law, and health policy and executive director of health affairs at Vanderbilt University. “You’ve got direct primary care, you’ve got physicians going and moving into cash pay. You’re gonna have to sit there at some point and say, ‘Wait a minute, they’re taking my business.'”

Although some hospitals and health systems that serve certain populations—such as Pomerene Hospital in Ohio with Amish and Anabaptist patients and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center with medical tourists—have long had cash-pay systems, it is still a relatively new concept for most providers in the United States.

According to data from Medscape, which surveyed more than 17,000 clinicians, just 17% of clinicians used cash-only, concierge, or direct-pay primary care models in 2020. Primary care providers (PCPs) made up the largest proportion of providers accepting cash pay, with 10% of practices charging patients a flat monthly fee for unlimited services.

“[S]ome providers embracing the cash pay revolution say their bottom line benefits from faster reimbursement, lower administration costs and higher patient retention,” Tepper writes.

In a 2020 report from the Society of Actuaries, almost all PCPs who operated under self-pay models reported “better or much better” personal and professional satisfaction compared to those under a traditional fee-for-service system. In addition, 34% of respondents reported “better or much better” earnings under a direct payment model.

How patients could benefit from cash-pay systems

According to Tepper, hospitals generally offer self-paying patients, who have typically been uninsured individuals or those with high-deductible health plans, lower rates for services compared to commercial insurers since they don’t have to handle administrative work or collections.

In a 2021 study published in JAMA Network Open, researchers analyzed rates for “shoppable” services at 922 hospitals and found that the proportion of hospitals that had lower cash prices than their median commercial negotiated rate ranged from 38.4% for liver tests to 68.5% for C-sections.

During the pandemic, more insured patients began to inquire about what services they could pay cash for, leading some health systems to create new payment models for certain procedures.

For example, Deaconess Health System launched an in-house bundled payment program, which includes cardiology, radiology, and urgent care services, in July 2020. The first year, the health system sold 130 bundled services, which increased to 351 in 2021, and 489 as of August 2022.

For any services not covered by the program, Deaconess offers a 50% discount on cash payments compared to its insurer rate. However, self-paying patients are required to pay the full cost of a procedure upfront.

“The patient has decided to take a bet on themselves,” said Steve Russell, VP and chief revenue cycle officer at Deaconess. “They have a high deductible, they don’t think they’re going to reach that threshold and their thought is, ‘If I don’t use my insurance, what kind of discount can you give me?'”

Separately, CommonSpirit Health‘s Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) launched its own bundled cash price program in 2018 after noticing that many patients with high-deductible plans would defer care due to affordability concerns. The health system also advertises and sells its services on MDsave, an online marketplace that allows consumers to shop for health care procedures.

“With the No Surprises Act and the price transparency regulations, this has to be something that we offer,” said Jeanette Wojtalewicz, SVP and CFO at CHI Health’s Midwest division. “You’ll see more of this coming.”

The future of cash-pay systems in hospitals

According to Aaron Miri, SVP and chief digital and information officer at Baptist Health South Florida, although few patients are currently paying directly for health care services, the industry is heading towards that direction, which means health systems need to be prepared to meet the demand.

“When you look at the directionality of demand, this is only going to go up,” Miri said. “Patients are going to start seeing their total estimated bill and say, ‘I want to spend my $500 at a health system that was really transparent with me, and made me feel comfortable, versus the health system down the road that I’ve always gone to, but that simply can’t tell me what my actual amount due is.”

To make it easier for patients to directly pay for procedures, some health systems, including Baptist Health, have updated their payment options by adding Apple Pay, Google Pay, or other online payment systems instead of just accepting payment in-person or by phone.

However, even as direct payment models become more common, some insurers are “using their leverage to slow adoption of cash pay,” Tepper writes.

Kimberly Scaccia, VP of revenue management at MercyHealth, said some of the health system’s contracts with insurers prohibit it from offering cash discounts to insured patients.

“Some of the smaller payers, they’re fine with removing [cash pay restrictions],” Scaccia said. “Some of the very, very large payers, they simply will not allow it.”

In addition, Matthew Fiedler, a senior fellow of economic studies at the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy, said clinicians may also be concerned about insurers asking to pay the lower cash rate during contract renewals or jeopardizing a provider’s network position.

“An insurer could say, ‘We’re gonna put this provider out-of-network, but we’re gonna put them in a preferred out-of-network position in our benefit design, where the cost-sharing is not that onerous, because we know they have this really good cash price,'” Fiedler said.

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) probing large anesthesia group

Posted on by • Posted in Federal Trade Commission, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Market Consolidation, Market Power, Market Share, Mergers & Acquisitions, Monopoly, Monopoly Behavior, No Surprises Act, Private Equity • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/b1e0aa55afe5/the-weekly-gist-october-7-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

The FTC is investigating US Anesthesia Providers (USAP), a private equity (PE)-backed group with 4.5K physicians working in nine states, over concerns of monopoly power in certain markets. The inquiry is focused on USAP’s acquisition history, which has followed the PE “playbook” of rolling up small anesthesiology groups into a single entity large enough to exert leverage in contract negotiations. USAP’s presence in Texas and Colorado is likely to be of particular interest, as it controls at least 30 percent of the anesthesiology market in both states. 

The Gist: Like many other PE-backed physician groups, USAP achieved market power mostly through myriad acquisitions too small to warrant regulatory attention on their own. The probe is in line with recent government scrutiny of private equity influence in the healthcare sector, and will no doubt be closely watched by investors and PE-backed groups.

If USAP is forced to divest from certain markets, the precedent could prove especially damaging to other rapidly growing investor-backed physician groups, particularly those staffing hospital functions, who are already being rocked by ramifications of the No Surprises Act. 

Biden Administration Releases Final Surprise Billing Rules

Posted on by • Posted in American Hospital Association (AHA), American Medical Association (AMA), Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, No Surprises Act, Out of Network, Out of Pocket Expenses, Out-of-Network, Rev Cycle Management, Revenue Cycle, Surprise Bills • Leave a comment
https://revcycleintelligence.com/news/biden-administration-releases-final-surprise-billing-rules?eid=CXTEL000000093912&elqCampaignId=27293&utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&elqTrackId=c8729b5d07f349a1beedda5783f88786&elq=0864aca7b9b54ac0b6be420307de302f&elqaid=28141&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=27293

 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 at in-network facilities.

The new surprise billing rules detail the process for payers and providers to settle on payment for those out-of-network services. Previously, payers and providers would submit payment rates to an independent arbiter, selected by the government. The arbiter would choose the rate closest to the area’s median in-network payment for the services, otherwise known as the qualifying payment amount (QPA), while considering other factors, such as provider training and experience, the provider’s market share, and how difficult it was to provide the service, after the fact.

Provider groups have criticized the use of the QPA as the primary factor in an arbiter’s decision, arguing that the added weight to the QPA amount favors payers over providers.

Notably, the Texas Medical Association challenged the surprise billing arbitration process over the QPA issue and won. A district court vacated the requirement that arbiters select payment offers closest to the QPA unless the additional information warrants a closer review.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) have also filed a lawsuit challenging the interim final rule implementing the dispute process, arguing that lawmakers did not intend for rules implementing the No Surprises Act to place that much emphasis on the QPA. The lawsuit is ongoing.

In light of the district court’s decision, the latest final surprise billing rules roll back the “rebuttable presumption” that favors the QPA. The rules state that arbiters are to consider the QPA “and then must consider all additional information submitted by a party to determine which offer best reflects the appropriate out-of-network rate.”

The final rules specify that arbiters “should select the offer that best represents the value of the item or service under dispute after considering the QPA and all permissible information submitted by the parties.”

The final rules also cover situations where payers have “downcoded” a claim. According to previous rulemaking, downcoding occurs when payers change service codes or change, add, or remove a modifier, which can lower the QPA for the service code or modifier billed by a provider.

The rules will create new requirements related to what information payers must share with providers when downcoding occurs. The information includes a statement that the service code or modifier was downcoded, an explanation of why the claim was downcoded, and the amount that would have been the QPA had the service code or modifier not been downcoded.

The Biden Administration—through the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury, which officially released the final surprise billing rules—said that the rules “will help providers, facilities and air ambulance providers engage in more meaningful open negotiations with plans and issuers and will help inform the offers they submit to certified independent entities to resolve claim disputes.”

But whether the updated language is enough to tip the balance for providers remains to be seen. AHA said in a news release late last week that it is closely reviewing the final surprise billing rules.

New York judge dismisses surgeon’s lawsuit challenging surprise billing law

Posted on by • Posted in Health Policy, Lawsuit, No Surprises Act, Out of Network, Out of Pocket Expenses, Out-of-Network, Rev Cycle Management, Revenue Cycle, Surprise Bills • Leave a comment
https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/surgeons-lawsuit-surprise-billing-law/629428/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202022-08-11%20Healthcare%20Dive%20%5Bissue:43753%5D&utm_term=Healthcare%20Dive

A New York federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a surgeon’s legal challenge that sought to roll back key pieces of a federal law that protects patients from surprise out-of-network bills.

Judge Ann Donnelly ruled against the surgeon, finding that the law is constitutional, and dismissed the case for lack of standing and dismissed the surgeon’s request for a preliminary injunction.

Katie Keith, a lawyer and health policy expert at Georgetown University who tracks surprise billing litigation, called the ruling good news for consumers.

The lawsuit threatened to once again expose millions of patients to surprise out-of-network bills, Keith previously said in a Health Affairs report on the litigation.

Daniel Haller, a surgeon, and his private practice filed suit in December against federal regulators alleging that the ban on surprise billing was unconstitutional along with the independent dispute resolution process, the way in which providers and payers are supposed to resolve payment disagreements.

Haller said the law deprives physicians the right to be paid a reasonable value for their services, according to the complaint.

Under the law, physicians and insurers can enter into an independent dispute resolution process to come to an agreement on the payment for services. The process was intended to keep patients out of the middle of these payment disputes.

Haller argued the process favored insurers — not providers.

However, a key part of that process was struck down by a Texas judge, who ruled in favor of providers in February.

Donnelly said Haller and his team did not show that they even went through the arbitration, or IDR, process, “much less that the IDR process resulted in a payment amount below the reasonable value,” according to Wednesday’s opinion.

“At the time of oral argument — almost six months after the Act went into effect — the plaintiffs could not say whether they had participated in the IDR process. They do not allege that the IDR process has caused any concrete harm, so their claims of constitutional injury are speculative,” Donnelly said.

Haller’s practice, Long Island Surgical, and its team of six physicians perform procedures on patients who are admitted after an emergency department visit.

Almost 80% of Long Island Surgical’s patients have an insurance plan that does not have a contractual relationship with the surgical group. In other words, Haller and his colleagues are almost always out-of-network, potentially putting patients at risk of a surprise medical bill.

The No Surprises Act tried to solve this problem, and it bans surprise billing in most cases.

The law aimed to tackle one of the most frustrating issues in healthcare, which could ensnare even savvy patients. Patients could be unknowingly treated by out-of-network providers, and then get bills their insurers refused to pay in full or part, leaving them stuck to pay the remaining balance.

No Surprises Act implementation includes telehealth

Posted on by • Posted in American Hospital Association (AHA), American Medical Association (AMA), Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Lawsuit, No Surprises Act, Out of Network, Out of Pocket Expenses, Out-of-Network, Rev Cycle Management, Revenue Cycle • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/no-surprises-act-implementation-includes-telehealth

Independent physician groups, which include telehealth docs, must now accept a rate that someone else has negotiated, expert says. 

The No Surprises Act has providers scrambling to understand the implications of a law that went into effect earlier this month.

Under the law, patients treated by an out-of-network physician can only be billed at the in-network rate. It protects patients from receiving surprise medical bills from the ER or air ambulance providers or for non-emergency services from out-of-network physicians at in-network facilities.

Patients can no longer receive balance bills – the difference between what the provider charges and what the insurer pays – or be charged a larger cost-sharing amount.

The congressional intent was to save patients sometimes thousands of dollars in unexpected, or surprise, medical bills. But applying the No Surprises Act to clinical care is being left to providers to sort out. 

A big question is the definition of an emergency and the benchmark used to determine when it ends, according to Kyle Faget, a partner at Foley who is co-chair of the firm’s Health Care and Life Sciences Practice Groups. She asked: Does the emergency end when the patient is stabilized, or should another standard apply? This includes emergency services for mental health and substance-use disorders.

Another question is around pre-planned services. Patients have to be notified who is providing the care and whether the physician is in-network. If the physician is out-of-network, patients must provide consent. But that can be tricky, for instance, if a patient scheduled for a planned C-section gets an out-of-network doctor who was not scheduled at the time the appointment was made.

At some hospitals, a new layer of administration is needed to comply with the law, Faget said.

Another area not well understood is how the law affects telehealth consults in the ER.

TELEHEALTH AND THE NO SURPRISES ACT

The law states that if treated by a telehealth clinician, the patient can only be billed the in-network rate, said Faget, who specializes in telehealth law.

Telehealth is often used in the ER, according to Faget. Most ER visits require a physician consultation, with hands-on medical care provided by a clinician other than the physician.

Pre-COVID-19, providers were in the embryonic stage of providing virtual emergency care, she said. The pandemic, and a shortage of physicians, spurred virtual care in the ER. 

These telehealth providers often work on a contracted basis. They are likely credentialed at the hospital but are not hospital employees, Faget said.

This means they are not credentialed with the insurer. Under the No Surprises Act, they are now subject to the in-network rates negotiated by the hospital. 

Telehealth ER physicians could negotiate their own contracts with insurers, but as a small group, they are not likely to get the higher rates they had prior to the implementation of the No Surprises Act.

“It’s an arduous contracting process, and small-group bargaining power is low,” Faget said. “The big hospital system has bargaining power. Those groups providing telehealth services won’t necessarily have agreements in place and, by definition, are out-of-network.”

Independent physician groups, which include telehealth docs, must now accept a rate that someone else has negotiated, Faget said. This fact can be more of an issue than the lower rate they’re now being paid, she said.

“I think telehealth will adapt,” Faget said. “I think it will become the way of doing business.”

WHY THIS MATTERS

The bottom line is that the No Surprises Act is doing what it promised to do – saving patients from getting a large bill not covered by insurance.

Surprise bills are a moral and ethical issue, Faget said. Patients, at their most vulnerable in the ER, are sent home only to get a $5,000 bill they never saw coming.

“It’s like kicking a person when they’re down,” Faget said.

However, in the larger healthcare ecosystem, ending surprise medical bills will ultimately result in cost-shifting, she said. 

“Think about the system globally: somebody is paying for something somewhere,” Faget said. “At the end of the day, somebody’s going to have to pay.”

THE LARGER TREND

Providers have told her that the No Surprises Act incentivizes insurance companies to lower their payments, Faget said.

The American Society of Anesthesiologists has accused BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina of doing this. A letter sent by BCBS of North Carolina to anesthesiology and other physician practices this past November threatens to terminate physicians’ in-network status unless they agree to payment reductions ranging from 10% to over 30%, according to ASA. 

The ASA saw this as proof of its prognostication to Congress upon passage of the No Surprises Act: that insurers would use loopholes in the law to leverage their market power.

The AHA and AMA have sued the Department of Health and Human Services  over implementation of a dispute-resolution process in the law they say favors the insurer. The arbitrator must select the offer closest to the qualifying payment amount. Under the rule, this amount is set by the insurer, giving the payer an unfair advantage, according to the lawsuit. 

Air Ambulance Costs Are Soaring

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https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/94818?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2021-10-05&eun=g885344d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Top%20Cat%20HeC%20%202021-10-05&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition

Air ambulance transport costs have skyrocketed in recent years, according to a new report from FAIR Health.

Notably, the average estimated in-network allowed amount for air ambulance transport increased 76.4%, from $8,855 in 2017 to $15,624 in 2020.

The jump was part of a general rise in costs for both airplane and helicopter air ambulance transport during this time period, FAIR Health said, which included increases in charge amounts (the amount charged to a patient who is uninsured or obtaining an out-of-network service), estimated in-network allowed amounts for privately insured patients (the total fee negotiated between an insurance plan and a provider for an in-network service), and Medicare reimbursement amounts.

The average charges associated with a fixed-wing air ambulance rose 27.6%, from $19,210 in 2017 to $24,507 in 2020, according to the report, and the average Medicare reimbursement amount increased by 4.7%, from $3,071 to $3,216.

For helicopter transport, the average charges associated with a rotary-wing air ambulance rose 22.2%, from $24,924 in 2017 to $30,446 in 2020. The average estimated in-network allowed amount increased 60.8%, from $11,608 to $18,668, and the average Medicare reimbursement amount again rose 4.7%, from $3,570 to $3,739.

“Air ambulance services have been the subject of substantial policy focus,” said Robin Gelburd, president of FAIR Health, in a statement. “We hope that this study of air ambulance transport proves productive to policy makers, researchers, payors, providers, and consumers seeking to better understand this corner of the healthcare system.”

FAIR Health’s report also found that air ambulance claims increased 30% from 2016 to 2020 (0.7% to 0.9%) as a percentage of all ambulance (ground and air) claims.

In 2020, the most common diagnoses associated with fixed-wing air ambulance transport were chronic respiratory diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic respiratory failure, and the second most common was COVID-19, which accounted for 7% of fixed-wing air ambulance claims.

Because air ambulance transport is often used for patients in life-threatening situations, they generally have no control over type of transport or provider used, FAIR Health said. As a result, surprise bills occur frequently.

A number of states have made efforts to regulate air ambulance charges, but these attempts have been overturned by court rulings that state that such efforts are preempted by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the report noted.

However, the federal No Surprises Act, signed into law in December 2020, contained provisions to protect consumers from surprise bills, including those from out-of-network air ambulance service providers.

On September 30, HHS held a press call on one of its surprise billing rules, which would require companies to give patients “good faith estimates” of charges upfront and to submit a dispute resolution for out-of-network surprise bills.

Asked by MedPage Today whether air ambulances would be included, a senior administration official responded, “Yes, air ambulances are covered by this rule. They will go through a very, very similar independent dispute resolution process [as other providers]. I think the only thing different about the air ambulance process is the list of allowable information that the parties can bring to be considered in addition to the qualifying amount.”

Setting the rules for settling “surprise bills”

Posted on by • Posted in Ambulance, Dept of Health and Human Services (HHS), Health Insurance Industry, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, No Surprises Act, Rev Cycle Management, Revenue Cycle, Surprise Bills • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/a2cd96a48c9b/the-weekly-gist-october-1-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

Surprise Medical Bills: New Protections for Consumers Take Effect in 2022 | KFF

On Thursday the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with other federal agencies, released the long-awaited second half of its proposed regulations implementing the No Surprises Act, passed by Congress at the end of last year, which bans “surprise billing” of patients who unsuspectingly receive care from out-of-network providers.

The interim final rule, which will take effect on January 1st after a comment and review period, lays out a process for addressing disputed patient bills, first through a 30-day “open negotiation” between the patient’s insurer and the out-of-network provider, and then through a federally-managed arbitration process.

Of most interest to insurers and providers who have lobbied fiercely for months to ensure a favorable interpretation of the law, the new regulation specifies that the outsider arbitrator, to be agreed upon by both parties, must begin with the presumption that the median in-network rate for services in the local market is the correct one. The arbitrator can then modify that price based on the specific circumstances of the case.

That method was broadly favored by insurers, and AHIP strongly endorsed the proposed approach, saying in a press release that “this is the right approach to encourage hospitals, healthcare providers, and health insurance providers to work together and negotiate in good faith.” Predictably, the hospital lobby felt otherwise; the American Hospital Association reacted by calling the rule “a windfall for insurers”, saying that it “unfairly favors insurers to the detriment of hospitals and physicians who actually care for patients.” 

The ultimate winners here are patients, who will gain important new protections against the potentially crippling financial implications of surprise billing. We’d agree with HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, who told the New York Times that the new rule would “[take] patients out of the middle of the food fight,” and provide “a clear road map on how you can resolve that food fight between the provider and the insurer.” It’s about time. 

Still unresolved: the high cost of out-of-network ambulance services, left out of the No Surprises Act altogether. Let’s hope Congress circles back to address that issue soon.