In a Sept. 7
comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), ASCP urged the agency to make a number of changes to its recent Surprise Billing Final Rule. As a patient-centric organization, ASCP urged CMS to work to ensure patients are held harmless from the impact and financial strain that arises from unanticipated medical bills, especially when they believe their care would be covered by their insurer. ASCP also outlined a number of recommendations to better ensure payment rates accurately reflect the nature of work provided by pathologists and other providers.
To ensure patient access, ASCP also stressed the need for a balanced approach to enacting the National Security Agency that ensures robust and adequate insurance networks to incentivize providers, such as pathologists, to participate. We reiterated that it is imperative to the success of the law that CMS provide rigorous oversight and effective regulatory solutions to ensure insurance network adequacy and transparency to avoid any patient access issues in the future. ASCP produced a policy statement on this topic in 2017 reinforcing the point that adequate insurance networks, which are inclusive of hospital-based providers, will minimize the need for balance billing.
ASCP will be commenting on future regulatory measures implementing the NSA as they are released; these future regulations will detail the independent dispute resolution process, which is critically important to ensuring that these regulations do not place undue burden on providers while ensuring fair compensation.
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For more information regarding ASCP's advocacy initiatives and policy positions, please contact ASCP's Center for Public Policy at (202) 408-1110.
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