By: Jon Jablon, Esq.

For those of you who have a player in the reference-based pricing game, you know that circumstances can arise when things don't go as planned. There are some providers, for instance, that are so dead-set on penalizing RBP plans and their members that they will accept nothing short of the full billed charge. As we all know, though, nobody gets paid full billed charges, and it's wildly unreasonable for anyone to expect that. But what is the end game, then, when a provider makes unreasonable demands and refuses to settle?

One option that's becoming increasingly popular is litigation – in other words, proactively suing a hospital, to help protect the patient. The suit needs to be filed by the patient, since the patient is the one to whom the balance “belongs” and therefore only the patient has standing to sue, but health plans and TPAs often provide assistance to patients with this endeavor, for obvious reasons.

Proactive litigation, or even just the threat, can serve a couple of important functions: it can compel a settlement when none was previously available; it can force the provider to publicize (and try to justify) its charge data; it can incentivize the provider to accept the Plan's payment or settle at a reasonable rate; or it can even lead to the formation of a direct contract that's acceptable to the Plan.

Now, please don't leave this blog post thinking that every claim should be proactively litigated. Litigating a small claim can actually lead to spending more on attorney's fees and costs than the full balance amount. We at The Phia Group have taken drastic steps to help with this dilemma, though; our patient Defender service is intended to give TPAs, employers, and plan members a sense of security with respect to their RBP plans, with the knowledge that the member has an attorney ready and waiting to go to bat when they need it. Most importantly, this attorney is pre-paid at no cost to the member, for a small, budgetable PEPM fee paid by plans or their TPAs.

Reference-based pricing is a tricky business, but there are programs that are designed to make it more manageable. Patient Defender is one of them. Have you found others? Tell us about them! We want to hear your stories.