The Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury (“the Departments”) have issued proposed rules governing the establishment of fees for the Independent Dispute Resolution (“IDR”) process under the No Surprises Act. The new rules were necessitated after a federal court struck down the previous increased fee of $350, which had been challenged by the Texas Medical Association in part because the Departments had not followed notice and comment rulemaking.
The proposed rules specify that the Departments will follow notice and comment rulemaking, both for setting the IDR fees for individual and for batched disputes. The proposed rules would set the fee at $150 per party per dispute effective January 1, 2024 until reset after notice and comment rulemaking. Under the proposed rules, the IDR fee would be set by dividing the projected amount of expenditures needed to carry out the IDR process by the projected number of administrative fees to be paid by parties to the proceedings. The Departments would retain the flexibility to update the fee when the total projected amount of administrative fees paid or the projected expenditures made by the Departments changes.
Comments on the proposed rules will be due 30 days from their publication in the Federal Register.
The proposed rules are linked here. Whatley Kallas, LLP’s previous article on the federal court decision striking down the increased IDR fee is linked here.