Is your practice entirely cash-based? Do you sometimes care for uninsured patients? In either case, new federal regulations around providing cost estimates may apply to you — and APTA can help you understand the new requirements before they take effect Jan. 1, 2022.

Now available: an APTA Practice Advisory on new requirements that providers supply uninsured or self-pay patients with good faith estimates for the cost of services. The provisions are a part of the No Surprises Act signed into law in 2020 aimed at protecting consumers from surprise medical bills.

The APTA Practice Advisory, a member benefit, provides background on the new requirements and who must comply (basically, all licensed health care providers), as well as information on how the estimates must be provided, and what they should include. Noncompliance with the new requirements could result in enforcement actions that include monetary penalties.

Links to templates created by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are also provided in the advisory, as well as an explanation of what happens if actual charges are significantly higher than what was offered in the estimate.