The Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) recently posted the slide decks for their recent webinars detailing changes to state law to align the state’s Balance Billing Protection Act (BBPA) with the federal No Surprises Act (NSA) and expand the BBPA balance billing protections to include crisis behavioral health services. OIC is in the process of uploading the webinar recordings and plans to have those available soon. The slides also include discussion of NSA requirements for notification and good faith estimates for scheduled services to uninsured and self-pay patients. The links to the slides for the various audiences are below.
Additionally, OIC has updated the standard notice of consumer rights to meet both BBPA and NSA requirements. The updated notices should be used for posting on websites and in circumstances under the law when needed to be provided to patients. The updated notice, and translations in ten additional languages are on the OIC website.
WSHA also recently released a bulletin summarizing major provisions of the bill with resource links. It can be found here. (Andrew Busz, AndrewB@wsha.org)
