Be Equipped to Address the Fallout of this Legislation
By Stephen Burgess, Ancore Health, and Michael Shipley, Stratasan
On July 1, 2021, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury, and the Office of Personnel Management issued an interim final rule to implement fundamental parts of the No Surprises Act (NSA). Despite the disarming title, the No Surprises Act will lead to many surprises, around lack of parity in reimbursements within a market. In upcoming years, payers and providers will be forced to evaluate their value proposition, market positioning, customer/patient transparency, and data analytics.
The NSA contains key protections to hold consumers harmless from the cost of unanticipated out-of-network medical bills. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “surprise bills lead the list of affordability concerns for many families; 2 in 3 adults say they worry about unexpected medical bills, more than the number worried about affording other health care or household expenses. Surprise bills can number in the millions each year.”
While the major implications of the NSA will benefit consumers, the severity of impact that this legislation will have on payers and providers will depend on how they react. In this post, we’ve worked to summarize this new law and discuss some of the ways that both providers and payers can be prepared to act.