Prompt Pay Law Set to Shift in GA

Prompt pay laws have been on the books since the 1990s. Today all 50 states have some type of prompt pay laws that require clean claims to be paid within 15 to 60 days. Noncompliance can result in fines and penalties, including interest payments.

It's unclear which states, if any, have duplicated Georgia's efforts to apply prompt pay laws to self-funded companies.

The AMA has cited Indiana and Ohio as having similar laws, but a quick check revealed that the Ohio Department of Insurance says on its website that its prompt pay law "does not apply to Medicare, Medicaid or self-insured ERISA plans." In Indiana, the state medical association's website has a similar prompt pay disclosure.

Jeremy Lazarus, MD, the AMA president told me in an interview that the AMA views the Georgia case as having a "national precedence" that will fill a "regulatory void." The issue is that "physicians want to be taking care of patients and not hassling with insurers to get paid."

Be sure and keep an eye on this one.