Company: UHS
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-027785
Chunk: 149

Company: UNIVERSAL HEALTH SERVICES INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1B
Chunk 149
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 years we have secured price increases from many of our commercial payers including managed care companies.

Commercial Insurance: Our hospitals also provide services to individuals covered by private health care insurance. Private insurance carriers typically make direct payments to hospitals or, in some cases, reimburse their policy holders, based upon the particular hospital’s established charges and the particular coverage provided in the insurance policy. Private insurance reimbursement varies among payers and states and is generally based on contracts negotiated between the hospital and the payer.

Commercial insurers are continuing efforts to limit the payments for hospital services by adopting discounted payment mechanisms, including predetermined payment or DRG-based payment systems, for more inpatient and outpatient services. To the extent that such efforts are successful and reduce the insurers’ reimbursement to hospitals and the costs of providing services to their beneficiaries, such reduced levels of reimbursement may have a negative impact on the operating results of our hospitals.

Surprise Billing Interim Final Rule: On September 30, 2021, the Department of Labor, and the Department of the Treasury, along with the Office of Personnel Management (“OPM”), released an interim final rule with comment period, entitled “Requirements Related to Surprise Billing; Part II.” This rule is related to Title I (the “No Surprises Act”) of Division BB of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, and establishes new protections from surprise billing and excessive cost sharing for consumers receiving health care items/services. It implements additional protections against surprise medical bills under the No Surprises Act, including provisions related to the independent dispute resolution ("IDR") process, good faith estimates for uninsured (or self-pay) individuals, the patient-provider dispute resolution process, and expanded rights to external review. On February 28, 2022, a district judge in the Eastern District of Texas invalidated portions of the rule governing aspects of the IDR process. In light of this decision, the government issued a final rule on August 19, 2022 eliminating the rebuttable presumption in favor of the qualifying payment amount by the IDR entity and providing additional factors the IDR entity should consider when choosing between two competing offers. CMS regulations and guidance implementing the IDR process has been subject to a significant amount of provider-initiated litigation. As a result, portions of those regulations and guidance materials have been vacated by a federal district court, causing CMS to, on several occasions, pause and resume IDR process operations, causing significant delay in the processing of claims. On October 27, 2023, HHS, the Department of Labor, the Department of the Treasury, and