By: Andrew Silverio, Esq.
Starting in 2020, Washington’s new law aimed at putting an end to a particular form of balance billing, known as surprise billing , will go into effect. This includes situations where a patient has no reasonable opportunity to make an informed choice regarding their utilization of in-network versus out-of-network providers, for example in the case of emergency services or non-emergency surgical or ancillary services which are provided by an out-of-network provider within an in-network facility. In these cases, the patient has no way of choosing what providers to utilize, or may not know (and would have no reason to think to ask) that they could be treated by an out-of-network provider while visiting an in-network hospital.
Washington’s law mirrors the approach we have seen in several other states – it takes the patient out of the equation entirely by prohibiting the provider from pursuing any balances from them, and leaves the provider and payer to sort out the issue of any remaining balances.
In resolving outstanding balances, the provider and payer must come to a “commercially reasonable” amount based on payments for similar services in the same geographic area, and in this regard the state actually provides a data set for the parties to reference. If the parties can’t come to an agreement, either can request arbitration, and the arbitrator will choose one of the parties’ last proposed payment, encouraging the parties to submit reasonable amounts (for fear of having to defer to the other party’s offer).
Importantly, the law does not (and cannot, because of federal preemption) apply to private, self-funded plans which are governed by ERISA. However, such plans can opt-in to the law via annual notification to the state. These plans should not expect to enjoy the benefits of the law’s balance billing prohibitions if they choose not to opt-in, and reference to the state’s claims database, available on the Washington Department of insurance website, should help them in determining whether it makes sense to do so.
The full law can be found at http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2019-20/Pdf/Bills/Session%20Laws/House/1065-S2.SL.pdf, and a useful summary is available at https://www.insurance.wa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/summary-of-2019-surprise-billing-law.pdf.