President’s Legislative UpdateThe State Legislative Session ended in mid-May. It was an extraordinarily busy session. The Association Lobbyist followed multiple bills important to Physical Therapists in Colorado. Chris Edmundson, Governance Affairs Chair, testified on behalf of APTACO on House Bill 1116-Contracts Between Carriers and Providers. This Bill requires that any contract between a health insurance carrier and a health care provider include at least one method of payment to the provider that does not have a fee and prohibits that contractor from only accepting virtual credit card payments. In addition, the bill allows providers to charge a reasonable fee related to transaction management, data management or other value-added services back to the carrier-essentially allowing you to recoup fees on virtual payments. Enforcement of this section is under the Commissioner of Insurance. The Bill had bipartisan support with a 57-2 vote in the House and 35-0 vote in the Senate and was signed into law by Governor Polis. This law will go into effect on August 7, 2023. At this time, APTA is not able to provide guidance on what would be considered a reasonable fee or how best to charge the carrier. Through coordination with the bill sponsors and other provider groups, we intend to send out guidance to our members prior to August 7th. Our Lobby team, with speed and foresight, headed off Medicaid’s attempt to require Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) compliance for outpatient therapies that are delivered by telehealth. This was a departure from the Association’s understanding that EVV requirements would only be limited to Home Health. We shared our concerns and our plan to run a bill to prevent the EVV requirement resulting in Medicaid decision not to move forward with the changes. Our Bill to allow physical therapists and physical therapists assistants to obtain Level 1 Accreditation in the Colorado Worker’s Compensation System was not introduced. With many new members in the State Legislature and their desire to advance their causes, our Bill was not considered. House Leadership was incredibly strict on what bills would be introduced and ours was not one of them. We did secure bipartisan sponsorship and will re-introduce the Bill next year. Sunset Update Jill Flaherty, PT, MS |