By: Jon Jablon, Esq.

You may have heard about our new Phia Certification program, through which The Phia Group requires all employees to be “certified” to the company’s satisfaction. Certification is obtained by watching, reading, and listening to a series of training materials and then taking a series of tests to confirm the employee’s understanding of our industry and all aspects of The Phia Group’s operations.

One particularly noteworthy question is:

Which of the following is the most accurate?

1. A “gap” is the amount a health plan pays for a claim between its normal specific deductible and a laser for a particular individual
2. A “gap” is a misalignment or misinterpretation of verbiage between the plan document and any supporting document or policy
3. A “gap” arises when the stop-loss policy contains a limitation that is not present within the plan document
4. A “gap” arises when the employee handbook guarantees 8 weeks of vacation but the plan says it will only cover 4

As you may have surmised, the answer is option B, which is essentially an “all of the above” type of answer. This is especially noteworthy because we find that folks in our industry often think of “gaps” as occurring only between the plan document and stop-loss policy, while in practice there are lots of other gaps that can cause lots of unforeseen problems for health plans.

A perfect example – and one that we deal with quite frequently – is when there is a gap between the plan document and a network contract. This can be one the most problematic of all gaps, since it can come out of nowhere. The issue arises like this:

A plan incurs an in-network claim, billed at $50,000. The SPD provides the plan the responsibility to audit all claims, and an audit reveals that the appropriate payable rate (the plan’s U&C rate) for this claim is $30,000. Meanwhile, the network contract provides a 10% discount off billed charges for this particular claim – resulting in the plan paying $30,000 based on the SPD, but owing $45,000 as the network rate. This is a very common scenario and not one that can be solved quite so easily; even if the plan says “oh right – the network contract! We’ll pay the network rate to avoid a fight with the network,” the dilemma may not be over, since stop-loss presumably has underwritten coverage based on the assumption that the plan’s U&C rate will be paid, resulting in stop-loss possibly denying the $15,000 paid in excess of the plan’s U&C rate. Even though there’s a network contract and the plan may have no choice but to pay it, there’s always the chance that the stop-loss policy will define its payment on other terms.

Moral of the story? Gaps in coverage can arise between the plan document and any other document – including network contracts, ASAs, stop-loss policies, employee handbooks, PBM agreements, vendor agreements, and more. Check your contracts, and make sure your SPD aligns with all of them! (Email PGCReferral@phiagroup.com to learn more.)