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Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

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Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

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Health Insurers and Hospital Groups Argue Price Transparency Rules on Hospitals, Clinical Laboratories, and Other Providers Will Add Costs and ‘Confuse’ Consumers

Insurance industry claims new federal price transparency regulations cost each payer as much as $13.6 million in set up and maintenance costs

Price transparency in hospital, clinical laboratory, and other service provider costs marches ever closer to reality for America’s healthcare consumers. Meanwhile, some insurers and hospital groups are working to block implementation of federal rules they argue will confuse consumers and potentially lead to higher costs.

The pushback from hospital and payer lobbies centers on a pair of new federal rules that build on directives in President Trump’s 2017 Executive Order Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition (13813) and that direct federal agencies to modify their implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The first is a Proposed Rule, titled, “Transparency in Coverage Proposed Rule” (CMS-9915-P) that would require payers to make public on their websites negotiated rates for in-network providers and allowed amounts paid for out-of-network providers. Insurers also would be required to make an online “tool” available to members that would provide consumers with out-of-pocket cost estimates for “all covered healthcare items and services.” The 60-day public comment period for this rule went into effect November 15, 2019.

The second is a Final Rule which goes into effect on Jan.1, 2021, titled, “Medicare and Medicaid Programs: CY 2020 Hospital Outpatient PPS Policy Changes and Payment Rates and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System Policy Changes and Payment Rates. Price Transparency Requirements for Hospitals to Make Standard Charges Public” (CMS-1717-F2). The rule requires hospitals to disclose online not only their chargemaster prices but also prices negotiated with payers for 300 “shoppable” healthcare services.

These shoppable services include:

Medical Laboratory and Pathology Services

  • Basic metabolic panel
  • Blood test, comprehensive group of blood chemicals
  • Obstetric blood test panel
  • Blood test, lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides)
  • Kidney function panel test
  • Liver function blood test panel
  • Manual urinalysis test with examination using microscope
  • Automated urinalysis test
  • PSA (prostate-specific antigen)
  • Blood test, thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH)
  • Complete blood cell count, with differential white blood cells, automated
  • Complete blood count, automated
  • Blood test, clotting time
  • Coagulation assessment blood test

Medical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups may want to closely monitor ongoing efforts by payers and hospital groups to block these rules, since any changes will extend to their services, as well as extend price transparency to most employer-based group health plans and health insurance issuers offering group and individual coverage.

Will Transparency Lead to Higher Healthcare Costs?

In its story on insurer claims, FierceHealthcare reported that the rule would require payers to disclose a “staggering” amount of data, leading to implementation costs 26 times more than the Trump administration’s $510,000 estimate. To comply with the federal rule, an insurer will spend as much as $13.63 million on setup and maintenance. That prediction is based on an economic analysis from economic consulting firm Bates White, which conducted the survey on behalf of The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA).

“Some plans have indicated they would be forced to run two sets of tools—one designed to meet member shopping needs and another implemented only to meet the requirements of the proposed rule,” the BCBSA told FierceHealthcare.

Meanwhile, the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP) argued in a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma that cost-sharing liability estimates—which are not a price quote for care—could “lead to consumer confusion and frustration.” The ACAP also asserts the transparency plan could inadvertently lead to higher healthcare cost increases.

“In the absence of quality data, consumers may determine that high cost equates to higher value, select the higher-cost providers, and ultimately drive up medical expenses, especially in circumstances where the consumer’s out-of-pocket costs have been met,” wrote ACAP Chief Executive Officer Margaret A. Murray.

The Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP) echoed those views in its own statement, claiming the Trump plan will burden consumers and drive up costs.

“We have long supported efforts to make quality and pricing information more accessible, understandable, and actionable for consumers,” the ACHP wrote. “But they need real-time, patient-specific information tied to individual coverage benefits, not a massive published list of prices that may only frustrate consumers and likely increase costs over time.”

Hospital Associations and Healthcare Systems Bring Lawsuit Against HHS

In December 2019, several hospital associations and healthcare groups filed a lawsuit to block next year’s implementation of the hospital price transparency rule. The plaintiffs included the:

These healthcare organizations and providers joined together to argue that HHS lacks the statutory authority to require and enforce public disclosure of individually negotiated rates between commercial health insurers and hospitals. They also say consumers are likely to be confused by the information they receive.

“America’s hospitals and health systems stand with patients and are dedicated to ensuring they have the information needed to make informed healthcare decisions, including what their expected out-of-pocket costs will be,” said Rick Pollack (above), President and CEO, American Hospital Association, in a news release. “Instead of giving patients relevant information about costs, this rule will lead to widespread confusion and even more consolidation in the commercial health insurance industry.” (Photo copyright: American Hospital Association.)

In its legal response, HHS contends that hospitals are adding to consumers’ confusion by failing to provide transparency.

“They do not dispute that consumers are casting about for accurate information about prices in a complex healthcare system, yet they rely on that same complexity as an affirmative reason to deprive patients of pricing information they need to figure out their out-of-pocket expenses,” HHS said in its brief.

DePaul University Professor Anthony LoSasso, PhD, who specializes in healthcare economics, admits to being “on the fence” regarding the pros and cons of transparency plans.

“I want to think that people can benefit from price transparency. But for a variety of reasons, people don’t look at pricing info even when it’s available,” LoSasso told WTTW News in Chicago.

Nevertheless, HHS vows to continue its push for price transparency.

“Hospitals should be ashamed that they aren’t willing to provide American patients the cost of a service before they purchase it,” HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary and National Spokesperson Caitlin Oakley told Reuters in a response to the hospital groups’ lawsuit.

In light of the government’s push to make healthcare pricing more transparent, clinical laboratory and anatomic pathology leaders in hospitals and health systems would be wise to prepare for a future that includes price shopping by consumers.

—Andrea Downing Peck

Related Information:

Executive Order Improving Price Quality and Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First

Transparency in Coverage Proposed Rule (CMS-9915-P)

Medicare and Medicaid Programs: CY 2020 Hospital Outpatient PPS Policy Changes and Payment Rates and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System Policy Changes and Payment Rates. Price Transparency Requirements for Hospitals to Make Standard Charges Public

Insurers: Price Transparency Rule Puts ‘Staggering,’ Expensive Burden on US

Lawsuit vs Alex M. Azar II, in his official capacity as Secretary of Health and Human Services

Hospital Groups File Lawsuit Over Illegal Rule Mandating Public Disclosure of Individually Negotiated Rates

The Pros and Cons of New Health Care Price Transparency Rule

Azar Price Transparency

Hospital Groups File Lawsuit to Block Trump’s Price Transparency Rule

CMS Seeks ‘New Direction’ for its Innovation Center as the Agency Evaluates Current Value-Based Payment Models for Medicare Services, including Medical Laboratory Testing

Federal agency receives input on eight focus areas as it looks for ways to enable providers ‘to design and offer new approaches to delivering care’

Medical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups preparing for the transition from fee-for-service healthcare will want to keep a close eye on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The federal agency’s administrator plans to set a “new direction” for CMS as it shifts to value-based reimbursement models for Medicare services that could impact clinical laboratory revenues.

In an informal Request for Information (RFI), the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) sought feedback on a “new direction to promote patient-centered care and test market-driven reforms that empower beneficiaries as consumers, provide price transparency, increase choices and competition to drive quality, reduce costs, and improve outcomes.”

CMS to ‘Move Away’ from Engineering Healthcare ‘From Afar’

The agency requested input on eight focus areas:

1. Increased participation in Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs);

2. Consumer-directed care and market-based innovation models;

3. Physician specialty models;

4. Prescription drug models;

5. Medicare Advantage innovation models;

6. State-based and local innovation;

7. Mental and behavioral health models; and,

8. Program integrity.

Comments from healthcare providers, clinicians, states, payers, and stakeholders were accepted through November 20, 2017.

In a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) op-ed, CMS Administrator Seema Verma explained the agency’s process moving forward. “We will move away from the assumption that Washington can engineer a more efficient healthcare system from afar—that we should specify the processes healthcare providers are required to follow,” she wrote.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma (above) plans to lead the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation “in a new direction” and may be signaling a willingness to give providers more flexibility with value-based care payment models for Medicare services. (Photo copyright: Healthcare Dive.)

The RFI states the new model design will follow six guiding principles:

1. Choice and competition in the market;

2. Provider choice and incentives;

3. Patient-centered care;

4. Benefit design and price transparency;

5. Transparent model design and evaluation; and,

6. Small scale testing.

Providers Need Freedom to Design New Approaches to Healthcare

Verma said CMS plans to review all Innovation Center models to determine “what is working and should continue, and what isn’t and shouldn’t.” She voiced concern that the complexity of some of the current models may have encouraged consolidation in the healthcare system, resulting in fewer choices for patients.

“We must shift away from a fee-for-service system that reimburses only on volume and move toward a system that holds providers accountable for outcomes and allows them to innovate,” Verma wrote in the WSJ op-ed. “Providers need the freedom to design and offer new approaches to delivering care. Our goal is to increase flexibility by providing more waivers from current requirements.”

Actual Progress of Value-based Healthcare ‘Herky-Jerky’

In its reporting on the recent CMS announcements, Healthcare DIVE suggested that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “is looking to make some potentially major changes” in value-based payment models.

However, Neil Smiley, CEO of Loopback Analytics, which assists healthcare organizations with managing outcome-based care, believes the transition to value-based care may face stiffer headwinds under the new administration. He points to an August CMS proposal that canceled some mandatory bundled payment programs and scaled back others as an indication that healthcare transformation could be slowing.

“The pace at which CMS committed to rolling out value-based care is fundamentally different from the pace we’re currently seeing,” he told Health IT. “The progress toward value-based care, instead of this steady momentum they expected, is more of a herky-jerky fashion.”

Modify, Don’t Abandon Existing Payment Models, suggests HCTTF

The Health Care Transformation Task Force (HCTTF), a 42-member industry consortium, was among the stakeholders who responded to CMS’ RFI. In a 22-page letter, the task force reiterated its support for the healthcare system’s transformation to value-based payment and care delivery, while outlining areas for improvements. The group urged CMS to continue to develop new models while modifying, rather than abandoning, existing models that show promise and need time to achieve a lasting return.

“We would like CMS to continue support for promising models while balancing the current portfolio with new, innovative payment models,” Clare Wrobel, Director of Payment Reform Models at HCTTF, told Home Health Care News. “[But] it would be a mistake to discard current models that providers have already invested in and are showing real promise.”

Smiley, meanwhile, suggests clinical laboratory managers, pathologists, and other healthcare providers keep watch as healthcare transformation continues to evolve.

“The fee-for-service model, love it or hate it, is not dying. The organism has adapted,” he told Health IT. “For those that were aggressive early adopters of value-based care and really believed what they were hearing, and have gone fully after value-based care, some of them may feel a little exposed. If they go too hard too fast, they may suffer economically if they misjudge the pace at which this moves.”

—Andrea Downing Peck

Related Information:

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services: Innovation Center New Direction

Medicare and Medicaid Need Innovation

CMS Seeks ‘New Direction’ for Innovation Center

Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Payment Model

Task Force Calls on CMS to Encourage Alternative Payment Models

CMS Request for Information: Innovation Center New Direction

Task Force Urges CMS to Preserve Value Based Payment Models

‘Death by 1,000 Knives’ Could Be in Store for Clinical Laboratories, Pathology Groups Not Prepared to Comply with New Medicare Part B Regulations

Medical laboratory leaders and pathologists must be fully aware of the coming legal and regulatory changes taking place starting January 1, 2018, or risk fines and decreased reimbursements

January 1, 2018, marks the start of new Medicare Part B price cuts for clinical laboratory  and anatomic pathology testing. But decreasing reimbursement rates is just one issue facing medical laboratory leaders. The other is the increasingly rigorous regulatory environment poised to ensnare labs and pathology groups unprepared to navigate the dark waters of government compliance.

Tougher payer audits, higher recovery demands, and enforcement policies that increase the personal liability of CLIA lab directors and lab executives, are reasons why attorney David W. Gee, JD, a Partner at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP in Seattle, argues that laboratories need to step up their focus on compliance and due diligence. He notes laboratories must guard against “death by 1,000 knives” in this new landscape.

Insufficient Focus on Compliance Brings Consequences to Clinical Laboratories and Their Management

“There are more and more people and agencies whose focus it is to regulate and watch the dollars and make sure there is integrity in the system,” noted Gee in an interview with Dark Daily. “That includes not only the formerly regular players—the OIG [Office of Inspector General, US Department of Health and Human Services] and DOJ [Department of Justice]—but you’ve got an increasing number of states with their own False Claims Acts. You’ve got state agencies looking at opportunities to clean up the system and to tag along with other investigations going on, as well as commercial payers who have become more active in pursuing litigation and other measures against practices they allege to be fraudulent.”

Faced with these emerging trends, Gee stresses that labs must:

1.     Recognize the increased personal liability facing lab directors, owners, and management, and take steps to mitigate risk of enforcement actions that not only expose executives to potential penalties but also jeopardize the financial health of lab organizations.

2.     Understand the importance of meaningful and sustained investment in compliance (including providing compliance officers with the resources to manage an increasingly complex job) and leverage OIG guidance to assess gaps and risks in compliance programs.

3.     Be aware of risks inherent in third-party marketing agreements, which can result in short-term spikes in order volume, but which also could reduce “lines of sight” to clients, making it even more difficult to adhere to compliance standards.

Gee believes the emphasis labs place on cost control and “running lean” often results in a lack of attention being paid to compliance. He argues today’s competitive environment increases the need for laboratory directors to ensure proper business practices are followed and “compliance fundamentals are not overlooked in the haste to compete for the business of referral sources.”

Healthcare attorney and Partner, David W. Gee, JD, of Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP, in Seattle will be one of three featured speakers during a new Dark Daily webinar on the Medicare Part B price cuts, and the critical legal and compliance issues clinical laboratories and pathology groups face starting in 2018. (Photo copyright: Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP.)

CLIA-Lab Directors to Be Held Personally Liable for Compliance Failures

Because federal regulators are considering holding CLIA-lab directors personally liable for compliance failures, Gee suggests laboratory executives should be motivated to put effective compliance programs in place.

“The best reason I can give for insisting as a lab director that the company actually has a successful and effective compliance program is that these days they stand to lose,” he argues. “The ability to prove you are not complicit—and that you are not the driver of things that have gone wrong—comes down to having an effective and well-documented compliance program so you are on record. And so there’s evidence that, as an engaged lab leader, you tried to do the right thing.”

Educational Opportunities for Lab Leaders

To help medical laboratory and pathology group leaders prepare for the perils they face, and take proactive steps to navigate the tough lab regulations and legal issues that lay ahead, click here to register for Dark Daily’s upcoming webinar “Tougher Lab Regulations and New Legal Issues in 2018: More Frequent Payer Audits, Problems with Contract Sales Reps, Increased Liability for CLIA Lab Directors, Proficiency Testing Violations, and More,” (or place this link into your browser: https://ddaily.wpengine.com/product/tougher-lab-regulations-and-new-legal-issues-in-2018-more-frequent-payer-audits-problems-with-contract-sales-reps-increased-liability-for-clia-lab-directors-proficiency-testing-violations-and).

This crucial learning event takes place on Wednesday, November 8, 2017, at 1 p.m. EST. Gee will be joined by Jeffrey J. Sherrin, President and Partner, O’Connell and Aronowitz in Albany, New York, and Richard Cooper, Chair, National Healthcare Practice Group, McDonald Hopkins, LLC, in Cleveland.

These three attorneys are among the nation’s foremost experts in issues unique to clinical laboratories, pathology groups, hospital labs, toxicology/pharmacogenomics labs, and molecular/genetic testing labs. Following our speakers’ presentations, there will be a question and answer period, during which you can submit your own specific questions to our experts.

You can’t afford to miss this opportunity. Click here to get up to speed on the most serious regulatory, compliance, and managed care contracting issues confronting all labs today. This webinar will provide solutions to the perils facing labs now and in 2018 by helping you map a proactive and effective course of action for your clinical lab or pathology group.

—Andrea Downing Peck

Related Information:

Tougher Lab Regulations and New Legal Issues in 2018: More Frequent Payer Audits, Problems with Contract Sales Reps, Increased Liability for CLIA Lab Directors, Proficiency Testing Violations, and More

What Every Lab Needs to Know about the Medicare Part B Clinical Laboratory Price Cuts That Take Effect in Just 157 Days, on Jan. 1, 2018

Nation’s Most Vulnerable Clinical Laboratories Fear Financial Failure If Medicare Officials Cut Part B Lab Fees Using PAMA Market Price Data Final Rule

Research Study at Johns Hopkins University Reveals CDC Does Not Record Medical Errors in Annual Mortality Report, Yet Such Errors Are Third Leading Cause of Death

An earlier Johns Hopkins study looked at diagnostic errors and determined that such errors were the leading cause of malpractice payouts. Can clinical laboratories help?

At a time of heightened transparency in healthcare outcomes, a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Johns Hopkins) study makes a startling conclusion: medical errors are an under-recognized cause of patients’ deaths in the United States. In fact, medical errors rank third—after heart disease and cancer—in causing patients’ deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins statement.

This finding has many implications for pathologists and clinical laboratory managers. Often, medical errors are associated with the failure of physicians to order correct medical laboratory tests at critical junctures. Alternatively, a medical error can result if the physician fails to take appropriate action after getting an accurate lab test result. Thus, any effort within the health system to reduce medical errors will probably bring pathologists and medical laboratory scientists into closer consultation with clinicians.

What the researchers at Johns Hopkins also learned during their study is that medical error is not reported as a cause of death on death certificates. Further, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has no “medical error” category in its annual report on deaths and mortality, The New York Times (NYT) reported. (more…)

New Medicare Program Bases Reimbursement for Hip and Knee Replacements on Value-Based Criteria, Now in 67 Regional Markets

Medicare’s latest payment rules for joint replacement surgeries is another step forward on the path toward bundled payments and similar value-based reimbursement models 

By now, most clinical laboratory managers and pathologists know about an ambitious new Medicare program that essentially brings a value-based reimbursement model to joint replacement surgeries. The program has already commenced in a number of regional markets across the United States.

This new program was instituted by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS). It is mandatory program and reimburses providers for hip and knee replacements using a reimbursement model that further ties Medicare payments to quality or value metrics. This program was launched in 67 metropolitan areas.

Called the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement (CJR) model, it establishes a 90-day episode of care from the date of the replacement procedure. Hospitals remain accountable for all charges related to recovery and rehabilitation within this window.

(more…)

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