Over the last year the healthcare community has been faced with many challenges because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve seen shutdowns, the halting of elective surgeries and procedures, a pivot to telehealth and a decline in patient encounters. Physician practices have had to navigate this and figure out how they would financially stay afloat during this time.

As we are now well into 2021, and over 12-months from the beginning of the first announced PHE (public health emergency), the past year has been a whirlwind of medical practices having to pivot to a new delivery of care, Telemedicine. This platform, also referred to as Telehealth, has seen an uptick of visits in the 80-90% range of overall patient outpatient encounters according to MGMA.

This article, written by Jeana Singleton, discusses how at the end of 2020, Congress passed The No Surprises Act, and that providers billing as out-of-network need to begin thinking about strategies to comply with the new law which is set to take effect on January 1, 2022. 

In this summation of the Federal Register, Sean Weiss guides readers through what he believes to be the most impactful parts of the Final Rule, and discusses new terms, what does and does not support VB arrangements, and much more.

In this article, Amanda Waesch discusses how the HHS issued multiple rounds of guidance regarding the reporting requirements for Provider Relief Funds, and how these many changes and uncertainty has affected how and when providers will receive funds moving from 2020 into 2021.

In a recent interview with Seema Verma, Administrator of CMS, Sean Weiss discusses with her the major questions left in the wake of significant policy changes, going over the 2021 HHS-CMS’ Conversion Factor, 1135 Pandemic Waivers, and other critical topics.