By Kevin Casey McAvey, Director, Manatt Health | Rachel Block, Program Officer, Milbank Memorial Fund

Despite near universal agreement that more transparency is needed, many regulatory, operational and technical roadblocks remain to accessing actionable information about how our health care system is performing and who is bearing its ever-growing costs. Nevertheless, with the passage of the No Surprises Act in December 2020, Congress took several steps to protect those most acutely impacted by our system’s lack of transparency and to invest in state data capacity in order to better understand local health care markets so that additional steps toward improving affordability can be taken.  Implementing the new federal surprise billing protections is an important priority that will provide immediate and important benefits to the public.

In “Better Health Care Data Depends on Federal–State Coordination,” a new blog post published for the Milbank Memorial Foundation, Manatt Health director Kevin Casey McAvey and Milbank program officer Rachel Block examine how key “sleeper” provisions in the No Surprises Act will increase state capacity to promote market transparency, including new support for state all-payer claims databases (APCDs) and provider directory requirements.

To access the full blog post, click here.