The federal government’s new Independent Dispute Resolution Gateway aims to bring order to the No Surprises Act’s (NSA) overwhelmed arbitration system by giving providers and insurers a centralized platform to initiate, track and respond to payment disputes. The tool arrives as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services confronts a system that has been flooded with far more disputes than anticipated and continues to draw legal challenges over award enforceability and calculation methodology.
Bracewell’s Carrie Douglas told Law360 that the platform should make it easier for providers to identify the insurer they’re working with, which in turn opens up “a critical channel of communication for negotiations, and perhaps lead to quicker, easier resolutions.”
“The biggest benefit is increased transparency for the providers,” Douglas said. The changes, she added, should “help the payors and providers engage in more meaningful negotiations at the open negotiations level, which should result in less NSA arbitrations and then also lower costs.”