“Surprise billing” occurs when a patient unknowingly receives care from a provider outside of their insurance network and the provider subsequently bills the patient for the amount not covered by their insurer. As many states have acted to hold patients harmless – which means that the patient is not liable for the billed amount – Congress continues to debate the best approach to resolve this issue for federally regulated insurance markets.

In an effort to streamline and simplify URAC’s scoring approach across accreditation programs, the Quality, Research, and Measurement (QR&M) team embarked on a project to discover the simplest approach to accreditation scoring while maintaining accuracy and rigor. Through the engagement of a professional statistician, robust methods were used to approximate a “true and real” application review score and compare it to seven unique scenarios that were then tested using four methods of score calculation.

If you’ve visited our website over the past few weeks, you may have noticed a new button showing up on a few pages. In early September, the Marketing and Sales department started rolling out a new feature on our Product and Contact pages – a Request a Quote button.

Recently, several new privacy laws that will affect our business have been implemented. One is from the European Union (“EU”) and the other, from California, is modeled on the EU law. 

We’d like to take a moment to get all of you thinking about your preparedness for an emergency.  We’ve been researching disaster preparation for the business this year but being prepared in your own home and discussing these plans with your family is even more important.

For the past 30 years, URAC has worked hard to provide the gold standard of accreditation. We believe our process demonstrates a commitment to quality services and serves as a framework for organizations to protect patients and save lives. We are excited to start on this journey with our new business contracts and also offer our congratulations to all the organizations who received accreditation and reaccreditation this month:

The Monthly Review spotlights a different URACer each month in a Q&A. This month it's Sarata Kabore, URAC's Accounting Manager.