Reed Smith News Flashes

Effective October 6, 2023, the Departments of Labor, Treasury, and Health and Human Services (theTri-Agencies) advised that the independent dispute resolution (IDR) portal was reopened for certain No Surprises Act (NSA) disputes and provided two FAQs regarding qualifying payment amount (QPA) calculations and IDR administration following the ruling in TMA III (see the previous alert discussing this ruling).

Relevant to IDR, the portal was reopened for in-progress air ambulance disputes and new and in-progress single disputes. For disputes where the IDR initiation deadline falls between August 3, 2023, and November 3, 2023, the initiating party has until November 3, 2023, to submit the initiation. Disputes initiated on or before November 3, 2023, will have 10 business days for IDR entity selection, rather than the normal three business-day period. Parties will also have 10 business days to select the IDR entity if they were engaged in the selection process when the IDR portal was closed on August 3, 2023. However, the portal remains closed for new air ambulance disputes and for all new and in-progress batched disputes as the regulators continue to grapple with the impact of TMA III. These temporarily revised IDR procedures are discussed in the FAQs regarding the partial reopening of dispute initiation.