Urgent: Contact Your State Legislators about Inappropriate Billing Practices

ASCP and your colleagues need your help to pass direct billing legislation for anatomic pathology services. The Missouri House of Representatives is expected to vote soon on SB 817. SB 817 has already been approved by the state Senate and several key Committees in the Missouri House of Representatives. The bill would protect Missouri's patients from potentially unnecessary medical services and inappropriate billing practices.

Your state legislators need to hear from you soon, since SB 817 could be considered by the legislature any day!

ASCP, along with the Missouri Society of Pathologists and the College of American Pathologists, is concerned about the adverse effects markups can have on the state's health care system. These bills address the substantial financial incentive for referring physicians to mark-up the cost of the pathology services they order but DO NOT perform.

The potential to profit by marking up test charges can increase costs, cause over-utilization, distort medical decision-making and result in unfair competition. It can also adversely affect patient care.

Since 1984, the federal government has required direct billing of laboratory services to prevent patient and program abuse. Moreover, the practice of marking up test charges violates the American Medical Association's ethical principles.

Write your legislators today to provide Missouri's patients with the same billing protections as provided to patients in 18 other states that have enacted laws to require direct billing or prohibit markups of anatomic pathology services.

To send a letter to your state legislators, please click on the link for the ASCP eAdvocacy Center. Your action on this issue should only take a few short minutes and could be the key in assuring direct billing for laboratory services in Missouri.