The tri-agencies are granting extensions of deadlines in conjunction with the portal’s opening:
- Parties for whom the IDR initiation deadline under applicable regulations fell or will fall on any date between August 3, 2023 and January 15, 2024 will have until January 16, 2024 to initiate a new batched dispute or a new single dispute involving air ambulance services.
- Parties whose initiation deadline falls on or after January 16, 2024 will have the usual four business days after the end of the open negotiation period to initiate a batched or air ambulance dispute in the federal IDR portal. Alternatively, if the dispute is subject to the 90 calendar-day suspension period following a payment determination, the parties will have the usual 30 business-day period to initiate a batched or air ambulance dispute in the federal IDR portal.
- For batched disputes and single disputes involving air ambulance services initiated under extensions of deadlines after the federal IDR portal reopens, the deadline for the parties to jointly select a certified IDR entity will be 10 business days after initiation.
- For disputing parties that were engaged in certified IDR entity selection for batched disputes when the federal IDR portal temporarily closed, the deadline to jointly select a certified IDR entity will be 10 business days after the federal IDR portal reopens, or December 29, 2023.
- An initiating party that has received a notification from a certified IDR entity that a dispute initiated before August 3, 2023 was improperly batched will have one opportunity to resubmit the improperly batched items and services for reconsideration within 10 business days of being notified by the certified IDR entity, provided that the initiating party’s four business-day period to resubmit the batched dispute expired between August 3 and August 9, 2023.
- Additional extensions to IDR deadlines may be granted upon request.
Newsflash 2023-181