The DOL, HHS, and IRS have issued FAQ steerage (Half 53) adopting an enforcement secure harbor for well being plans and insurers reporting sure kinds of in-network charges underneath the transparency in protection (TiC) laws. As background, TiC ultimate laws issued in November 2020 embrace necessities for well being plans and insurers to publicly disclose value info in machine-readable recordsdata for plan years starting on or after January 1, 2022 (see our Checkpoint article). The disclosures should present (1) relevant charges for in-network suppliers; (2) allowed quantities and billed prices for out-of-network suppliers; and (3) prescription drug value info. Shortly after the TiC laws have been finalized, Congress handed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA), which, along with protections in opposition to shock medical payments from nonparticipating suppliers or services, contains transparency necessities that overlap with the TiC laws (see our Checkpoint article). Earlier FAQs supplied steerage on a number of the CAA necessities and addressed the overlap and implementation timelines for the TiC and CAA transparency necessities (see our Checkpoint article). Amongst different issues, the companies deferred, till July 1, 2022, enforcement of the requirement to publicly disclose machine-readable recordsdata for in-network charges and out-of-network allowed quantities and billed prices.
This FAQ steerage explains that the TiC laws require plans and insurers to publish an In-Community Fee File, which can embrace negotiated charges, underlying payment schedule charges, or derived quantities for lined objects and companies. The laws present that the In-Community Fee File should categorical charges as greenback quantities. Nevertheless, after the laws have been printed, questions arose about contract preparations underneath which a greenback quantity can’t be decided till a declare is made. To handle these conditions, the FAQs present an enforcement secure harbor with two provisions. First, a share quantity in lieu of a greenback quantity could also be reported by plans and insurers that use percentage-of-billed-charges reimbursement preparations underneath which it’s not potential to precisely decide particular greenback quantities earlier than a contracted merchandise or service is supplied. Second, plans and insurers could disclose in an open textual content area an outline of the formulation, variables, methodology, or different info needed to know the reimbursement association if the association just isn’t supported by the schema supplied within the companies’ technical implementation steerage or requires extra context to be understood.
EBIA Remark: Whereas this enforcement secure harbor supplies slim aid, each bit helps because the July 1 compliance date for machine-readable recordsdata approaches. The companies point out that they’ll monitor implementation of the machine-readable recordsdata necessities and should revisit this secure harbor sooner or later, together with when underlying payment schedules grow to be extra broadly out there as suppliers transmit anticipated prices to plans and insurers in reference to superior explanations of advantages required by the CAA. For extra info, see EBIA’s Well being Care Reform handbook at Sections XXXVII.D (“Transparency in Protection Price-Sharing Disclosures”) and XXXVII.E (“Shock Medical Billing Transparency Disclosures”). See additionally EBIA’s Self-Insured Well being Plans handbook at Sections XXVIII.H (“Transparency in Protection Price-Sharing Disclosures”) and XXVIII.I (“Shock Medical Billing Transparency Disclosures”).
Contributing Editors: EBIA Workers.
