Among the study's findings:

The Act appears to be protecting patients from the most pervasive forms of balance billing and getting consumers "out of the middle" of payment disputes between providers and payors.
Physicians, hospitals, and payors have taken critical steps to adjust operational processes to mitigate the risk of consumers receiving balance bills for services covered by the NSA and to pay only in network cost sharing for those services.
In general, state and federal regulators report relatively few NSA-related inquiries that rise to the level of violating the law.
Cases related to self-funded plans are regularly transferred "in batches" electronically from HHS to the DOL, where benefit advisors provide further analysis and investigation.

Related: Survey: No Surprises Act prevented more than 2 million unexpected medical bills

The study's results notwithstanding, its authors noted that they were preliminary and could be somewhat misleading. Consumers could be paying balance bills without realizing it, due to the low level of health literacy in the U.S. Not all payors and providers have taken the administrative steps necessary to process balance bill claims. And there could be more claims in the pipeline that have not yet been processed, which would create a false sense of a low claims environment.

Instant Insights /

No Surprises Act: Has the law had the desired impact on surprise billing?

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