Beyond the Bottom Line

#top .hr.hr-invisible.av-lp0dm4z0-ecbd31d22a8f649a0b55c5e684e7f0bc{ height:15px; } .avia-image-container.av-p7lzn9-40a456cadae8a0efe9d6d576419c24a6 img.avia_image{ box-shadow:none; } .avia-image-container.av-p7lzn9-40a456cadae8a0efe9d6d576419c24a6 .av-image-caption-overlay-center{ color:#ffffff; } Beyond Compliance with Hospital Price Transparency With Host Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions and Guest Govi Goyal, President, Financial Services of Panacea Healthcare Solutions #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-46zq5v-ac3d0c5b9ed47d8f3785414847690b8c{ height:15px; } In this episode of Beyond the Bottom Line, Kevin Chmura is joined by Panacea’s President of Financial Services, Govi Goyal, to discuss the recent changes in the latest chapter in Hospital Price Transparency. Govi presents his thoughts regarding the latest price transparency requirements, with a heavy emphasis on machine-readable file, which received a decent amount of changes since last year. He will also touch on the events that led us to today’s landscape, while also exploring compliance pitfalls to be aware of. Episode transcript available below. Kevin Chmura Hi, and welcome to this episode of Panacea’s podcast, Beyond the Bottom Line. Let’s talk healthcare, finance, revenue cycle and compliance. I’m your host, Kevin Shimura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions. Today we’re welcoming back Govi Goyal, our President of the Financial Services Division at Panacea, to talk about recent changes in the latest chapter in hospital price transparency. Govi, welcome back. Govi Goyal Thank you. Kevin Chmura So Govi, we’ve done a bunch of these together and as usual you maintain your position as a leading national thought leader on the topic of price transparencies. So rather than maybe bringing, you know, dragging you through and asking you a series of questions, maybe I’ll just open up the floor to you. I think people want to hear what you’re thinking about. Especially as it comes to the new machine-readable file requirements. You know, we had an awkward series of events that got us to where we are today. Maybe you could touch on that and maybe just talk about some compliance pitfalls. That you can see. And so rather than me getting in your way, I’ll turn it over to you and let you take it from here. Govi Goyal Yeah, absolutely. I think awkward is a good way to describe it. The timing is really good though. It’s another year. So we’ve got another year of new price transparency requirements. This time there’s not any changes to the consumer display or patient estimation system, but there’s certainly a decent amount of changes that are happening with the machinable file, which has really been a work in progress, I’d say over these last few years, but there’s been significant activity within the last year. So, in just a few weeks here, April 1st, CMS will begin enforcement of the new requirements that were laid out. In both the proposed and final rule for 2026. Technically these are effective January 1st, we’ve got a little bit of grace period which I think hospitals are taking advantage of it. So on the technical side of things, what we’re seeing is that CMS is really getting. What’s getting rid of the replacing the estimated, the current estimate allowed amounts with four new allowed amount fields. And these fields are the median allowed amount, the 10th percentile, 90th percentile and then the count of allowed amounts. And so I think it’s really important to kind of understand this part there and you know why. What does this really mean and why is this happening? So as a kind of a refresher here, estimated allowed amounts by definition refers to the historical average payment that a hospital received for that given payer or plan and for that for that billing code. And it’s really applicable when you may not have a standard negotiate rate or you have a standard negotiate rate. But then that could be varied by other factors. So for example, you’re getting paid on a percentage charge on a DRG. We know that the gross charges could vary from patient to patient. There’s not a standard negotiated rate. So CMS came up with the estimated allowed amount, which is basically a second field for a negotiated rate when there is no standard. Or let’s say you have a scenario where you’re a hospital, you’re getting paid on a case rate for a given surgical procedure, but then there’s also the opportunity to get paid an additional amount if it’s a high dollar claim in the in the concept of stop lossless or lessor of, so that whole concept is not changing. CMS is not changing the qualifications, how you qualify a line item that would need in this case going forward for 2026 in April, now a median allowed amount. Really what’s changing here is the calculation itself. So instead of looking at a historical average, we’re now CMS is now asking hospitals to get to the median, the 10th and the 90th percentile and then also include the count of allowed amounts. So the qualification process same, the calculations are changing and I think you hit the nail on the head there, Kevin. We have to kind of go back in time. We got to get in our time machine here. We don’t have to go too far back, but if we go back about a year ago and think about the executive order. That’s really where this all started. The executive order, it came out sometime, I think in February of 2025. And I think a lot of the healthcare industry was really unsure of how much of an impact it was. We weren’t sure if this is just another opportunity for the Trump administration to bash the previous administration. Maybe they were including that as well, but we didn’t know if there was really teeth to it. The biggest thing that came out of that executive order was language that said no more estimates. We’ve got to start moving to actuals, and none of us really knew what actual meant. We also saw language around more enforcement. We kind of know what that, you know, that means. And so from there was a flurry of, you know, and you’ll use the word you said, awkward activity that happened. We did see a lot more warning letters and corrective action plans come out and that was kind of expected. But within 90 days of that executive order, we saw new guidance from CMS that came out. And this is really where it got really confusing for a lot of folks in there because that guidance basically said, OK, CMS is basically unhappy with the low reporting of estimated allowed amounts that are on the MRF. They were, I don’t know, you know how you can set a certain benchmark on it, but they were expecting to see a lot more results from the MRF and what CMS had instructed hospitals to do is if there’s no historical like remit activity, you know you can’t really calculate average. So, in those cases just put 9/9s as the estimated allowed amount, and it could be the case that there are certain hospitals that are abusing that or maybe that’s the way it was, but CMS was seeing way too many nines all over the MRF and so in their attempt to fix a problem, you call that problem a maybe a not complete enough file. I think what they ended up creating was a different problem. They created more problems with the file being accurate because CMS instructed hospitals out of that guidance and made us say, OK, stop it with the nines, you can no longer put nines. You now need to calculate what would an estimated allowed amount be. Even if we understand you don’t have any volume or remit data, but you just need to do it. And so that’s where there was a lot of pushback from the public, the industry, including other vendors and hospitals including HFMA. And we’re just trying to get understanding more, well, how would we actually do this? How do you, if you don’t have any historical data, how do you want us to calculate it? And you also go further away from standardization, which was also the executive order. So very quickly after that guidance came out, the OPPS came out, the proposal came out and that’s really when we saw CMS instruction to just get rid of it. Does this entirely replace the estimate allowed amount? No more estimates. Let’s move forward with these new four new allowed amount fields, the median, 10th, 90th percentile and the count of allowed amounts. And ultimately that is going to work out better. We can get kind of more into that. The other big change that we’re seeing with the with the price transparency this year is the attestation and this is creating a lot of, I think, disruption in the industry. A lot of, I would say a lot of hospitals are uncomfortable putting the name of a senior official CEO, whatever is on the on the file. This name is different from what hospitals are doing today with a text file. The name that goes in the text file, that’s more for answering technical questions. But the name that’s supposed to be on that attestation student is really the person that’s overall accountable, accountable for this file being accurate and complete. And so really kind of, we’re in this state of scrutiny and everything. It really puts a heightened a heightened level awareness to that to the hospital as they post the machine readable file. Kevin Chmura That’s a ton going on there and after all the work we did on just expected allowed amount over all that time and all the consternation that created and then to have the relief of the 9s. Only to have that taken away. It’s a little bit of whiplash, isn’t it? But as you said, I think it’s a great way to say it. The machine readable file is still a work in progress, right? And we’ll get it there at some at some point. Anything the hospital leaders should be thinking about that in terms of pitfalls and what’s going to trigger CMS warning letters? Govi Goyal Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So right now CMS is, I think they’re going through different phases of enforcement levels. Currently they’re really looking at hospitals to comply with the accessibility requirements as I mentioned the text file. So what CMS is planning on doing is at some point automating, and they might be doing it already, automating kind of their enforcement process where they’re going to be sending out these bots. And through the standardization process, each hospital is required to have a text file on the root folder of their website in which that allows CMS to in one place, a standardized location, be able to get a link to where your MRF is, see you know your date of last update, see who’s responsible for your file, and this will really allow CMS to automatically grab your file, and then subsequent to that; run, run it, run it through the what’s called the CMS MRF validator. So I would highly encourage hospitals if you haven’t already, you know, make sure you’re compliant with a text file, your MRF goes to the validator without any errors, you have price transparency in the footer of your of your website and then just making sure your date of last update is within the last year. So those are some low hanging fruits that are easy to check now and make sure you get in shape. I would think, you know, beyond that, it’ll be interesting to see how CMS evolves in their enforcement process. CMS did issue out an RFI right around the same time they issued that guidance back in May of 2025. And some of the questions they were asking the public in that RFI was, you know, how, how should we go about enforcing? What’s the best way to enforce? How do we, should we put definitions around what quality or what about accuracy and complete means? Do we want to add additional fields into the MRF? And so, I believe they’re reviewing the results of that, but I imagine at some point they could get more invasive and start asking for source data, asking for your chargemaster, your payer contracts because really until they have access to that type of information. They really can’t do a full compliance audit. They’re just really kind of left to running it through their validator. Kevin Chmura Yeah, the validator is it’s so important because it’s the easiest way to trigger that you’ve got a problem, right? And it’s not a really complicated check for anybody to go in and do so. So that’s great advice. So go, we’ve done, I don’t know, I don’t know how many of these we’ve done, but a lot. And I’ve asked you the same question every time and you’ve gotten it right every time. So I just want to point that out. So like I always do, I’m going to ask you to look in your crystal ball and tell us what you see coming for 2027 and beyond. And no pressure that you’ve never been wrong. Govi Goyal Right. Wow. So, what I like to do is think about, you know, why, why is CMS going about some of these recent requirements? It gives you an indicator of what they’re likely going to be doing in the future. And so we talked about why the new requirements, the median, the 10th, the 90th, the count allowed amounts, why that’s replacing the estimated allowed amount and we get it right. It’s kind of like median home prices, right, versus looking at average the median is going to give is going to give you more of an accurate amount because it’s not gonna be skewed by outliers: statistics 101. But CMS is really wanting, you know, this is really if you think back about the intent of price transparency, it’s really to provide consumers with informed choices to drive down the cost of healthcare. And so what CMS is looking for is really for consumers to use the machine readable file, which we know is really not happening today, although we do have some statistics in place and we’re running it for certain hospitals and we are seeing an increase, an uptick in the number of users using the machine readable file. It’s a little bit tricky to kind of get some more context if it’s really patients that are shopping around, but for example if I was, if I was a consumer, a patient says I need to go in for a colonoscopy and I had the option of either choosing hospital A or hospital B. If I go, now colonoscopy might not be the best example because that’s actually required in a consumer display or patient estimation system, but let’s hypothetically say it was a service I was looking at and it was not, it was not in the consumer, it was not part of the shoppable services, but it was a schedulable service and I need to, I need to find out, you know, what my potential out of pocket would be. If I’m using two, if I’m looking at two different MRFS from different hospitals, if both of them say $5,000 is the median allowed amount, that alone is not really helpful, right? I mean, OK, great. So, these hospitals are roughly the same distance from me. Quality scores are same. They’re both in my network and I have a high deductible, so I’m looking at this amount. I’m going to pay most of it. It’s both $5000. So where do I go from here? What CMS really is looking for is for consumers to leverage additional fuel types like the 10th percentile allowed amount the 90th percentile and the count. Let’s say hospital A has a range the 10th percentile is 3000, but the 90th is 12,000 it’s super high and there’s only three allowed amounts, whereas the other hospital B has, let’s say maybe $7000 as the 9th percentile and it has 30. It has 30 allowed amounts. Which hospital am I going to be more confident, right? Which hospital has more reliability? And so clearly if I’m a consumer and I want to have some more confidence, I’m going to trust maybe hospital B. It’s got more data and there’s a there’s a tighter bell curve around that. I think that we’re probably a little bit further. It’s probably a stretch before we get there. This was this is always meant to be the consumer-friendly expected allowed amount that kind of changed over time and now we’re calling it the median. So I say all of this because I do think one of the biggest changes we’re going to see going to 2027 is that CMS is going to expand. They’re going to expand that patient estimation system or consumer display to all scheduled services. It’s not just going to be 300 because they’re going to realize this is, this is challenging for consumers to use them or not. Other things that are happening here in in 2027 likely to happen beyond, I would say, and there’s bills, you know, so there’s the there’s a few Senate and House bills out there that are hinting at price transparency to extend beyond hospital locations right now, you know, freestanding imaging centers, laboratories, physician practices and they, with the exception of Minnesota, are kind of off the hook. They’re not required to comply with the same requirements as hospitals and so there could be more pressure and eventually at some point that’s a federal thing that they all have to comply with an MRF and a consumer display or patient estimation system. We’ll likely see. I don’t know one likes this one, but the payers have to update their files on a monthly basis. You could see how it could get challenging for a patient or someone to use an MRF that’s 10/11 months old and they’re not sure if the rates are still effective and how that changes their out of pocket or if they’re using it for negotiations, how it could impact reimbursement rates. So, we might see more frequent updates of MRF. Those are some things I think are likely to happen. Probably not, probably a gradual, maybe not immediately going to monthly, maybe a quarterly basis or maybe some kind of grace period as well. Kevin Chmura Something great to think about as always. I mean there’s a lot of room for expansion into other areas for machine readable file compliance and then frequency could really be a challenge for a lot of people. So Govi, thank you for joining me today and for sharing your insights on this important topic. As always, your expertise and perspective are incredibly valuable, and I know our listeners gained a lot from this conversation. For those of you who would like to explore this topic a little further, Govi will be presenting a webinar entitled Beyond Compliance with Hospital Price Transparency on Thursday, April 16, at noon Eastern. He’ll go into more detail and offer additional guidance. You can register by scanning the QR code on your screen or by visiting the Panacea website. Thanks for listening, and we hope you’ll join us for the webinar.

#top .hr.hr-invisible.av-lp0dm4z0-ecbd31d22a8f649a0b55c5e684e7f0bc{ height:15px; } .avia-image-container.av-p7lzn9-ca64b9bb777573d554de4869a8146a76 img.avia_image{ box-shadow:none; } .avia-image-container.av-p7lzn9-ca64b9bb777573d554de4869a8146a76 .av-image-caption-overlay-center{ color:#ffffff; } Panacea Healthcare Solutions Acquires MedLearn Media With Host Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions and Guest Angela Kornegor, CEO of MedLearn Media #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-46zq5v-ac3d0c5b9ed47d8f3785414847690b8c{ height:15px; } In this episode of Beyond the Bottom Line, Kevin Chmura is joined by MedLearn Media’s CEO, Angela Kornegor, to discuss Panacea and MedLearn’s shared history, in response to Panacea’s latest acquisition of MedLearn. Kevin and Angela dive into MedLearn’s trusted education brands which include MedLearn Publishing, RACmonitor and ICD10monitor and how combining forces completes the model of software, consulting and professional level education. They explore how this will give coding, HIM and compliance teams the tools, insights and accredited education needed to keep up with complex rules while protecting revenue and focusing on patient care. Episode transcript available below. Kevin Chmura Welcome to Beyond the Bottom Line. I’m your host, Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions. After eight years apart, MedLearn Media has rejoined Panacea and I couldn’t be more pleased about that and I want to share why. Today I’m sitting down with Angela Kornegor, head of MedLearn, to talk about our shared history. MedLearn’s trusted Education brands which include MedLearn Publishing, RACmonitor and ICD10monitor and how combining our forces completes the model of software, consulting and professional level education. Our goal is simple, give coding, HIM and compliance teams the tools, insights and accredited education they need to keep up with complex rules while protecting revenue and focusing on patient care. So, Angela, welcome. Welcome to Panacea. Let me be the first to welcome you to Panacea. But I guess I should do this appropriately and welcome you back to Panacea. That’s probably the way to say it, right? Ours is an interesting. History, Panacea and MedLearn. And you’re probably more qualified to talk about it than I am because you, your time spanned both the time we were one company and the time we were and now we are again. So maybe I could ask you to just give me a couple of minutes on the history for everybody that’s listening. Angela Kornegor Yeah. Well, it’s been eight years. So, it’s been eight years since MedLearn was a part of Panacea, which was great. We were together for six years. At that time, we had MedLearn Publishing, RACmonitor, ICD10monitor, which we still have, but we didn’t have the depth of content in the digital format that we have now, eight years ago. Kevin Chmura Yeah, yeah, that’s it. And so a series of M&A moves brought the company together, brought the companies together, broke them apart. And then we found our way home to each other just a month or two ago. How long has it been? Angela Kornegor It’s been a long time, but it’s just officially a month ago. Kevin Chmura Deals are hard. Deals are hard and you were great during the deal. We have said this to each other that that the deals are hard because for so many people in a deal, the day of the closing is their last day. For you and me, it’s the beginning. We were involved in the rest of it as well. You were great. So, I’m looking forward to, you know, really working with you, not just to get the deal done. So, look for the Panacea customers who are pretty, pretty tight on what we do. I thought maybe you could give me a couple of minutes on. On MedLearn, generally catch everybody up. There are those who will remember MedLearn from the past and as you just stated, you’ve evolved greatly. So, you just if you give us a couple of minutes on what you’re doing today. Angela Kornegor Absolutely, absolutely. So again, we still have our three brands. So MedLearn Publishing, RACmonitor, ICD10monitor. Our goal there is to focus on trusted deep. Content that will help with regulatory rules and all the burdensome government changes that are going on left and right to help make sure that they can A) get accredited content because that’s what they need to keep their credentials up, but we want to help make sure that they’re continuing to be the hero at what they do because it’s not an easy job, it’s tough. And these complex rules make getting their revenue, focusing on patient care a challenge. And we want them focusing on patient care because that’s what impacts all of us. Kevin Chmura Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. You know the coding HIM in in healthcare often called mid-rev cycle and it really is it’s the core. And when you think about it’s… The core is the handoff from the clinical to the financial and that handoff is so critical and we as an industry has not. We haven’t made it easy for the folks that are professionals in that space. We don’t need to have. I spent 30 years in the back end of the revenue cycle, certainly could get credentialed in different things, but was never required to unlike coders. So, what MedLearn does is so critical to that world and we’re excited to bring it to Panacea. I think that for us, where we live, several of our deliverables have clinical or coding or compliance orientation and we’ve been very proud of what we’ve done, especially in our coding audit space, bringing education back to our customers and our education is superior relative to competitors, but it’s still based on what we learned during that audit. We never had or I shouldn’t say until we came back together. We were really unable to extend that with professional level education and that’s what MedLearn is going to bring to our customers. So, we’re excited about doing that for our customers to be able to bring the subscription-based model that you have for some of your education, even the books, right? Yeah, coders still love books. Angela Kornegor Oh, they do. Kevin Chmura They do. And I have them on my desk as you know, I sort of leave them out as props today, but they. They’re super high quality and great. And without that, without that content available to people that we hadn’t had, we always had as complete a model as we could make it. And I really think that now at Panacea we’ve completed the model. So, we’re really excited about that. What’s exciting to you? Angela Kornegor There’s a few things. Definitely what we didn’t have, which now we’re going to have is a deeper level of expertise on pricing, price transparency that is going to give us more content and more well-rounded to be able to take our digital subscriptions and our accredited content to customers. So, we’re going to be able to get into deeper areas that we haven’t gotten into before, which are imperative. I cannot wait. Kevin Chmura Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you what I’m excited about all of that. And two things. One, we’re bringing together two talented groups of people. So that just accrues benefits to the customers. So, it’s going to be wonderful to work with you, but you are not MedLearn alone, right? You’ve got a very talented group of people. You’ve got a big, big network of subject matter experts that you bring to the table as well. We’re excited to get to work with them. And then for me, what we have collectively is a very large customer base. We do business collectively with thousands of hospitals on an annualized basis of thousands of providers of all types to physician practices, clinics, ASCs and the Panacea deliverables really addressed most of those markets. The Medlearn content addresses all of them. So, what we have is a collectively large customer base that we can extend from software to consulting and now education. I don’t think there is another group out there that has what we have right now. So, what we pull together here is unique but makes so much sense. Almost obvious in a way, and I want to take credit for it and so should you. Except we used to be one company. Angela Kornegor Yes, exactly. Kevin Chmura And so homecoming of sort, and it makes a ton of sense. So we have some amazing things that we will be rolling out over the next year. I don’t know how long it, you know, there’s some immediate things that people will say. I think what for MedLearn customers, one thing that’s important to stress is the MedLearn brand name and delivery and approach and quality. It’s why we wanted to bring the companies together. We have no interest in changing that. So, if you’re a MedLearn customer out there, MedLearn will still be MedLearn. It will be a Panacea company. We’ll bring additional technology, a lot of resources, some sales, other things to the equation, but we intend to leave MedLearn alone otherwise and we think that’s really important. And but we also expect to benefit Panacea with that, so you’ll start to hear if you’re a Panacea customer, you’ll start to see an up leveling of our education and the quality of the information that we bring into our deliverable, which is exciting. So, we’re looking forward to that. What else can we tell everybody? Angela Kornegor I think we need to say what we’re going to bring to the table from a continuum of just, you know, from RACmonitor, ICD10monitor, Northern Publishing, such a wide expertise of CE credential content, digital subscriptions that are really affordable. We’re going to allow clients to be able to get access to everything, which is nice. You know, we’re, if they’re if they want multiple domains, multiple product lines, users, our goal is to make sure that we can offer this great trusted education that’s been around for over 30 years at a very affordable rate, because that’s what our market needs. Kevin Chmura Definitely, definitely. Yes. Margins at our customers are not getting wider. So, opportunities to spend more money will not be there. One thing that I think our collective customer base and prospect base can expect from us too, is what we have in Panacea and MedLearn are two companies that are very good at outreach to our customers, multiple channels. You’ve got several successful podcasts, webcasts that are on a weekly basis. ICD10monitor, RACmonitor. Tune into those if you don’t already, those are amazing, including a bunch of the webcasts. We have podcasts, we do a lot of webinars, educational webinars and our outreach on both companies is pretty vast. I think you’ll see a lot more of that and but all with educational content sort of baked into now. Which I think that’s going to be a game changer for our customers, which is exciting. So you’ll get to travel to New Jersey a little bit more. As we sit here today. Angela Kornegor I’m getting used to the turnpike. I can do this. I can do it. Kevin Chmura The turnpike can stay on the car side, stay from the trucks and- Angela Kornegor I did pay attention- Kevin Chmura You did well getting here. So that’s good. Well, I have had the pleasure of traveling out to Saint Paul quite a bit, which is where you’re located as we are headquartered there. So, that makes life convenient, but I’ve not actually rented a car while I was there. I’ve been Ubering. So, for all I know, I can’t drive in Minnesota, so I won’t comment at all. But I’m looking forward to a really good long stretch that we’ll have together. Angela Kornegor Yeah, I am too. This is gonna be exciting. Great. Kevin Chmura Okay. Angela Kornegor Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome. Thank you. Kevin Chmura I’m Kevin Chmura and this has been Beyond the Bottom Line by Panacea. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes featuring more expert guests. We invite you to join the conversation on LinkedIn. Please follow Panacea Healthcare Solutions, MedLearn Media, Angela Kornegor, and myself. We welcome your feedback as we work to bring you the most relevant and impactful content in the industry. Talk to you soon.

#top .hr.hr-invisible.av-lp0dm4z0-ecbd31d22a8f649a0b55c5e684e7f0bc{ height:15px; } .avia-image-container.av-lp0ehts2-4651558e3615e819bf1aaa2b983f5b55 img.avia_image{ box-shadow:none; } .avia-image-container.av-lp0ehts2-4651558e3615e819bf1aaa2b983f5b55 .av-image-caption-overlay-center{ color:#ffffff; } Medicaid Eligibility Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Our Expert Breaks it Down With Host Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions and Guest Brian Herdman, Director, Financial Reimbursement Services, KA Consulting Division #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-46zq5v-ac3d0c5b9ed47d8f3785414847690b8c{ height:15px; } In this episode of Beyond the Bottom Line, Kevin Chmura is joined by policy expert Brian Herdman to discuss how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is set to impact Medicaid eligibility, what this critical issue means for hospitals and healthcare providers, and how these changes can affect your bottom line. Kevin and Brian dive into not only what changes providers can expect to see right away, but also those changes which will be coming into play in the next few years, and how to best prepare before they happen. They also explore what challenges hospitals can expect to see as a result of this bill’s passage, as well as if there are any positives for healthcare systems or providers. Episode transcript available below. Kevin Chmura Hi, and welcome back to Beyond the Bottom Line, Panacea’s Podcast exploring the business and policy issues that matter most to healthcare organizations. I’m your host, Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions. In this follow-up episode, we’ll continue our conversation with Panacea’s policy expert, Brian Herdman, about Medicaid funding, a critical issue for hospitals and healthcare providers, and take a closer look at how the latest developments in Congress and the administration could impact your bottom line. We’ll also revisit some of the practical steps you should be thinking about today to strengthen your organization’s financial position now that we’ve seen how these policy issues have unfolded. So Brian, welcome back to the podcast. Brian Herdman Great to be here. Kevin Chmura Great to have you back. So, Brian, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the OBBBA has now been signed into law and we did a podcast on this topic in March, at which point we were really looking at the versions of the bill that were being kicked around. We were really probably going more off of what we were seeing in the press, in the media, and less what we really knew. Now we’re getting a real look at it. You’ve had an opportunity to spend some time with the text and do your analysis. You are by far our best regulatory expert here at Panacea, so interested in in what you’re saying now, we can spend a lot of time going through the individual provisions as they relate to Medicaid and those things that will be deeply impactful. If we went through all of them, this would be a three hour podcast and I think we lose a lot of the audience. I thought maybe what would be better for everybody, given your expertise in this area? Probably crafting it a little to our target audience, which is probably mostly hospitals and health systems, wondering if you might just spend some time talking about those provisions and those elements that you’re paying the most attention to, the things that you think will be most impactful. And maybe we just take the conversation from there. Brian Herdman Sure. Sure, Kevin. So, you know, after all that back and forth and all those, you know, 4th of July deadline to get the bill passed and whatnot, there is a lot of, you know, what’s going to stay in, what’s not going to stay in between the House and Senate reconciliation process. And now that that has shook out, you know, as I’m looking at the Medicaid specific provisions, because I think that’s where the big change is going to be for our clients, on that Medicaid provisions, you know, there’s kind of two kind of two way, two sets of issues our clients are going to have to look at, you know, the things are going to affect which specific claims are going to be eligible for Medicaid and at what amount. And just generally speaking, the environment that the state, that the provider operates in the state with the state’s Medicaid program, what’s happening with FMAP, what’s happening with state directed payments and how is that going to all unfold? So as I’m looking at those two kind of main themes, you know, what’s happening like, you know, soon what’s happening soon-ish and then, you know, what’s kind of pushed out far ahead. And when I look at the things that are coming up soon, it’s not anything that’s like, you know, hair on fire, oh, my gosh, we have to do a lot of things differently. There was that immediate elimination of some moratorium on some things that would get you streamline applications into Medicaid. That’s going away. And, you know, there is that reduction in FMAP percentage to states when they have done that expansion. But, you know, on the margins, none of those things are going to be a dramatic change to how our clients, you know, get how many of those claims go through and how much they really get paid by the state. When you really start to see that happen is around January 2027. That’s when we’ll start to see a lot of big changes. And looking at those kind of changes right away our of the gate, that’s when you have the introduction of co-payments for enrollees that are at 100% or more of the federal poverty limit. That’s when that six-month redetermination process with that much tighter limits on retroactive coverage and work requirements, that’s coming into play in January of 2027. So, you know, up until then, I don’t think the kind of claims that get paid by Medicaid, there’s going to be a lot of change. But once you hit January 2027, all bets are off and you’re going to have to really have yourself organized. And then there’s those state directed payments. You know, that’s going to be much more difficult to foretell. There are a number of things that are going to affect how states are paid. There’s a couple of different dimensions that they’re tweaking the FMAP percentages on. But generally speaking, it’s that expansion population and how various undocumented beneficiaries are treated or allowed to be covered. Once states, you know, start to deal with the change in how that money is coming in from the feds, then that’s when you might start to see states start paying providers differently, whether it’s, you know, maybe a perhaps in margin on the erosion, on a on a payment or if you’re relying on those state directed funds to make up your margin, you know, you’re really going to be limited in what you can get from it. Kevin Chmura Okay, that’s excellent. Maybe double click on a few of these. I think it’s difficult for you and I as we sit here to comment on individual states, because depending on where people are listening in from, it could be very, very different scenarios. You and I are both in New Jersey right now. We don’t want to make this too New Jersey centric. A couple of things that really jumped out at me that I think that you touched on and just curious what your thoughts are. For instance, the work requirements for Medicaid, for those that are in the expansion population aged 19 to 64. That provision doesn’t start until December 31st, 2026, I believe, which is effectively January 1st, 2027. Is that right? Brian Herdman That is correct. So when I was talking about like in the short term, you know, the kinds of patients that you would expect to get paid and covered under Medicaid isn’t going to change a whole lot. But once you hit January 2027, that’s where on the margins there’s going to be some very difficult cases to get through. Kevin Chmura Right. Likely then flowing out and up to another year later as things flow into state budgets as well. So that might not be directly budgetary impact. That’s a that’s a process issue, one that matters. The other process issue that jumped out at me as I think about our eligibility enrollment business at Panacea, is the increased eligibility redeterminations down to six months from a year. Any thoughts on that? Brian Herdman Well, that’s, you know, that’s going to challenge, you know, your systems and how you’re usually interacting with patients. You know, when it’s when it’s a year in between these cycles, you are often dealing with someone who if they had an encounter that was a that was a spate of illness that got them on to Medicaid and had some follow-up care, you still might be in touch with them six months down the road, whereas twelve months down the road they might not need any care. And so in that case, you’re going to you’re going to be much more interested in making sure that care continues and you’re going to have to be more engaged with your patients. As you look at what services those patients that are trailing off and receiving, and how you reach out to them to make sure that their coverage continues without a break. Kevin Chmura Yeah, that’s great. So the other thing to think about is the other side of a of an application. So at a hospital you work with a patient, you have them fill out the application, you gather up their documentation that then goes to a county office who just doubled up the amount of work that is potentially flowing through and probably not one-for-one doubling, because you’re right, if a patient doesn’t need care six months out, they may not get that redetermination. But the good chance they’re still in an episode of care and need to do that and the depending on where you are, those county offices can be well back-logged to begin with. Brian Herdman And now they’re looking at the work requirement portion of it, too. So that’s another layer that they’re going to have to somehow verify or audit as they’re going through this process. So it’s not going to be easy at these county offices doing these processing. Kevin Chmura No, no. I always felt for the folks that work in those offices anyway, because they do very important work on typically limited resources, but about to get a lot tougher. And I’ll throw one more into the mix, and that’s the reduction, the reduction and retroactive coverage just tightened up the time frame by which applications need to be initiated down really to, I believe one month. If I was reading it correctly from previous days. Brian Herdman Yeah. Kevin Chmura Yeah. For a lot of states and so and so an urgency to get applications in coupled with increased amount of data that needs to be interpreted and then at a higher frequency than it ever was in the past, is that good synopsis of it? Brian Herdman That is that is going to be a whole lot of needing to get done with more than less on both sides of the ledger. Kevin Chmura I tell you what, it’s a as is often the case probably with these things, the economic drivers are what everybody pays attention to. And so the realities of the of what a change in a, say, regulation or in this case a way that the program is administered. It’s not necessarily really thought all the way probably through to the end user of it. So that is a, and from where we sit, we know from our business that’s a huge it’s going to be a huge change to the people that we work very closely with to enroll these people in Medicaid. Whether you use an outside firm like ours or you’re handling it yourself, those applications all go to a single point in whatever county your hospital sitting in and it’s that, it’s going to be a tough one. That’s going to be a challenge. And I don’t want to challenge how much you remember about the bill. I think some of those provisions actually kick in at different times, too. So, yes, you don’t get the big bang overnight. All of it’s going to change. It chips away at you over time. Brian Herdman You know that chipping away, you know, is that we’re going to have a layered effect. And I think we’ll see a lot of state legislatures, at least having the discussion. You know, if they are an expansion state, is there going to be that pressure to eliminate that? Or if they have a program that covers undocumented via you know, child care program or something else, that there’s going to be other pressures on that. So all these providers in those areas are going to have to watch and pay attention because, you know, depending how their state legislature goes, there’s a cohort that may all of a sudden need coverage and be in in their uninsured population where they had been in the past. Kevin Chmura Yeah, that, right. And then couple that with a reduction in the federal funding of most of the programs that were covered under the Affordable Care Act, which just will constrict the amount of money flowing through the system to cover all these folks on top of a greatly increased administrative burden. I want to challenge you, Brian, but is there any good news in this bill? Brian Herdman I mean, the doctors get a little bit of a bump next year. I mean, that’s, and that’s just on the Medicare side and that’s one year and that’s going to go back and back down after that. So we’ll see how this rolls out. Kevin Chmura Okay, great. So maybe one last question, because I think if we dive in, any of these we’ll go way too long. I believe some of these provisions, many of these will be subject to some version of rulemaking. Yeah. These are general. Right. Any thoughts on that? Brian Herdman You know, it kind of remains to be seen. We can look at how some of these states, like Georgia and whatnot, have done with their work requirements, what happened with them as they tried to bring things on, what barriers they ran into in verifying what they could, and then what that meant from the plans going forward. So it’s going to be a very difficult process, especially on the audit side of this. And providers are going to have to, you know, react quickly when those audits happen and see what, how they’re pushing back on the documentation that’s been submitted, especially in those early waves. When you know, this ramps up and they have to, of course, correct and get what’s needed going forward. Kevin Chmura Yeah. Everybody involved, every stakeholder has something new to learn along the entire continuum. So a lot going on. So, Brian, maybe we leave it there and I will reserve the right to bring you back again, because I’m sure we will learn more over time. The initial analysis that you’ve done is amazing. I know we’re going to dive deeper, spend more time with it, talk to a number of our customers, talk to some of our state legislative folks and lobbyists and see what we can learn and bring that content out to everybody as well. So, Brian, thank you very much for joining us. Brian Herdman Hey, thank you for having me. I’m happy to come back. Kevin Chmura And talk to you soon. Brian Herdman Thanks. Kevin Chmura I’m Kevin Chmura, and this has been Beyond the Bottom Line, by Panacea. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes featuring more expert guests. We invite you to join the conversation on LinkedIn. Please follow Panacea Healthcare Solutions and connect with me and Brian. We welcome your feedback as we work to bring you the most relevant and impactful content in the industry. We’ll talk again soon.

In this episode of Beyond the Bottom Line, Let’s Talk Healthcare Finance, Revenue Cycle and Compliance, host Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea, is joined by Brian Herdman, Panacea’s Director of Financial Reimbursement Services, as they discuss the House Republican budget plan’s mandate to reduce spending from a variety of programs, including Medicaid With cuts of approximately $880 billion in funding over the next ten years, find out what programs are likely to see a reduction.

In this episode of Beyond the Bottom Line, Let’s Talk Healthcare Finance, Revenue Cycle and Compliance, host Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea, is joined by Brian Herdman, Panacea’s Director of Financial Reimbursement Services, as they discuss the House Republican budget plan’s mandate to reduce spending from a variety of programs, including Medicaid With cuts of approximately $880 billion in funding over the next ten years, find out what programs are likely to see a reduction.

In this episode of Beyond the Bottom Line, Let’s Talk Healthcare Finance, Revenue Cycle and Compliance, host Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea, is joined by Brian Herdman, Panacea’s Director of Financial Reimbursement Services, as they discuss the House Republican budget plan’s mandate to reduce spending from a variety of programs, including Medicaid With cuts of approximately $880 billion in funding over the next ten years, find out what programs are likely to see a reduction.

#top .hr.hr-invisible.av-lp0dm4z0-ecbd31d22a8f649a0b55c5e684e7f0bc{ height:15px; } .avia-image-container.av-lp0ehts2-2feccf4627f137cb1e356cb0c18d2ff6 img.avia_image{ box-shadow:none; } .avia-image-container.av-lp0ehts2-2feccf4627f137cb1e356cb0c18d2ff6 .av-image-caption-overlay-center{ color:#ffffff; } President Trump Reintroduces Price Transparency with New Executive Order With Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-46zq5v-ac3d0c5b9ed47d8f3785414847690b8c{ height:15px; } In the first ever episode of Beyond the Bottom Line, we take a look at a new Executive Order from President Trump, Fulfilling the Promise of Radical Transparency, signed February 25th, 2025. Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions and our host, is joined by Govi Goyal, President of Panacea’s Financial Services Division, to discuss this new enforcement to Hospital Price Transparency regulations. Listen in as they break down what is new in this Executive Order, what enforcement measures are now in place, and what steps healthcare organizations should take to ensure compliance. In addition, hear what Govi Goyal predicts for the future of Price Transparency. #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-2re35v-5ad9607ceb2e766cfd1618fc64fea115{ height:15px; } #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-m7tjcqjy-c6521239b29024472a577a9284623ae0{ height:15px; } Episode transcript available below. #top .hr.hr-invisible.av-m7tj99tp-2ca3c06c01668ad3ffcef2515598e6a0{ height:30px; } Kevin: Welcome to the inaugural episode of Panacea’s new podcast Beyond the Bottom Line. Let’s talk healthcare, finance, revenue cycle and compliance. I’m your host, Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions. Whether you’re a healthcare executive, a financial professional, or simply curious about how these essential pieces of the healthcare puzzle fit together, you’re in the right place. Our goal is simple to give you actionable insights and expert perspectives that can help you optimize your operations and drive strategic growth. In this episode, I’m joined by Govi Goyal, Panacea’s President of our Financial Services Division. Financial Services Division at Panacea handles our strategic pricing and Price Transparency products and services. Govi is a nationally recognized expert on Price Transparency topics, having really been a leader since the first regulations were released by CMS. And we are providing a little bit of rapid reaction to a new executive order that was signed by the President yesterday and want to just give some initial feedback, some observations, some client interactions that we’re having, and just catch everybody up on what’s going on in as close to real time as we can. So first, let me welcome Govi to the show. Welcome, Govi. Govi: Hi Kevin. Kevin: Good to talk to you as always. So as I mentioned, we have a new executive order signed by President Trump. It was less than 24 hours ago as we record this right now. Interesting, and but probably not surprising to those of us that have been immersed in this, I’m sure not a surprise to you Govi, in the first Trump administration, the president and his team showed a real commitment to Price Transparency. Really believing it was a way to help lower healthcare costs for individuals and employers to buy insurance. Many people will likely recall that it was President Trump that signed the No Surprises Act in 2020, which gave way to Good Faith Estimates as another element of Price Transparency. He always showed a strong commitment to Machine Readable Files and to consumer displays for comparative shopping. So it probably shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us that within a month of taking office or so, he has signed an executive order, really doubling down on some of the work he did in his first administration. I’m just going to for the audience’s benefit, in case you haven’t seen this yet, you’re hearing this for the first time. I’m going to just read one section of this. Just bear with me. It’ll only take a second. And then I’m just going to ask Govi for his reaction to it. So Section 3 of the executive order, signed on February 25th, 2025, is entitled Fulfilling the Promise of Radical Transparency. I love the adjective in there, radical transparency, and it states this: the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take all necessary and appropriate action to rapidly implement and enforce the healthcare Price Transparency regulations issued pursuant to Executive Order 13877, including within 90 days of the date of this order. Action to: A. Require the disclosure of actual prices of items and services, not estimates; B. Issued updated guidance or proposed regulatory action ensuring price information is standardized and easily comparable across hospitals and health plans, and; C. Issued guidance or proposed regulatory action updating enforcement policies designed to ensure compliance with the transparent reporting of complete, accurate and meaningful data. That’s the meat of the EO. The preamble before that, what’s after that is generally general provisions and I have my own thoughts on it, but they will pale in terms of their importance to yours Govi. So Govi just it’s as new. We’re seeing it for the first time. Just curious if you could give me your initial reaction to what we’re seeing here. Govi: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, for a brief moment, the spotlight is taken off DOGE and away from all these federal workers who possibly might lose their jobs, and it was on Price Transparency. And a lot of this is not surprising. It’s a bipartisan issue. So the Republicans want it. The Democrats want it. So I think, you know, a lot of what’s in here confirms that Price Transparency is here to stay. It’s also going to continue to evolve, and I think while this particular executive order is a lot more about enforcement, which has been lagging, there has been enforcement and we have seen some improvement in compliance. But there’s still a lot of gaps in the data, there’s errors. And I think it’s been almost a year since the last hospital received a Civil Monetary Penalty. This executive order doesn’t necessarily have what I would say, like new policies or new requirements that providers need to immediately start incorporating or applying in their process. That should be a relief for many hospitals. Those who have invested significant time, costs and energy, especially on the January 1st changes we had this year with the Machine Readable Files of estimate allowed amount of pharmacy and modifiers and then all the changes that happened in 2024 with the standardized CMS template. Kevin, you did touch upon I think I agree that is the perhaps the most important part. Section 3 taken from the executive order, especially that first line item where it talks about departments, and it’s referring to HHS, Treasury and so forth, where hospital payers need to disclose the actual prices, you know, not estimates, including pursuant drugs. So in order for Price Transparency to really achieve the goals that it’s trying to achieve, which is to make healthcare more affordable, provide patients with informed decisions, increase competition. Three things need to happen. The files and data needs to be accessible, which I think we’ve come a long way. We’ve removed a lot of barriers to have the text file, the links are required in the footer of hospital websites. They need to be complete. So you can’t have significant gaps, things missing, and then they need to be need to be accurate. And if only they’re accurate, that’s the only way consumers will be able to shop around accurately. That’s one way we will be able to get to more standardize, less disparity in pricing across some across different organizations or healthcare organizations. So I think that is an important call out because a lot of hospitals, health systems have been leaning more towards using historical claims and payments data to arrive at their negotiated rates, which is which is okay to do for the estimated allowed amount, but in terms of getting to your standard negotiated rate, that should really be taken from your actual payer contracts to be as accurate as possible. Kevin: Yeah, that’s something that we for reference for those listening, at Panacea, we work with a few hundred hospitals across the country to help with their compliance needs relative to Machine Readable Files and other elements of Price Transparency. And so we, you know, we live in the world of accessible complete and accurate as Govi put out there and each has its one or two of them are simple, complete and accurate can be complicated. As we learned with the January 1st compliance deadline, with the inclusion of estimated allowed amount. So one of the things that strikes me about this, Govi, and just wondering what you think about it, is really B and C both talk about issuing updated guidance on proposed regulatory action, and they both say that same thing. They don’t say we’re going to update the regulation and the rules. We’re not going to add an additional field. This is very much to me enforcement oriented. Would you agree? Govi: Yes, I would agree. I think likely the scenario we had this year and last year was hospitals were getting a little bit of a break. You know, there was it was such a big change to go from the 2021 requirements of Price Transparency to all of a sudden jump to the 2024 and 2025. So the thought process was give a little bit time breathing room for hospitals to respond and apply those changes. Maybe with the direction we’re seeing of this executive order is, okay, the time’s up, it’s time to get more serious about enforcement and potentially, you know, we could see an evolution in the way CMS is doing their review is to confirm compliance, potentially gathering actual payer contracts again, to kind of see if the actual negotiated rates or prices that are on the files. Kevin: Yeah. That that would be something because that’s a big gap in the enforcement as it exists today, especially when you get to complete and accurate. There’s really, it’s difficult for an outside entity to really be able to tell that without all of that information. So that would be some step up in enforcement, would be pretty intrusive, but probably the only really way to get to those two points. I know it’s been less than 24 hours since this was signed. Wondering, you are the face of this for Panacea. Have we heard anything from our client community or other partners in the space about this EO? Any chatter out there? Govi: Yes, it’s certainly getting the attention of many, and I think, you know, the immediate and the immediate concern is, you know, are we okay? Do we need to take any immediate action? You know, what kind of sort of lies ahead? As in for now, everything is status quo. For the most point. There are some, you know, questions even that I have, and the way you might interpret this as the executive order states, you know, not estimates currently under Price Transparency. See, there’s two parts to it. One is the Machine Readable File. The other parts, the consumer display, which is really just showcasing a hospital’s top 300 shoppable services and their associated negotiated rates. A lot of hospitals have opted, in lieu of that, to have a patient estimation system. It’ll be interesting to see if we start to see some rebranding or renovation where we start calling that, you know, the patient accurate system where there’s going to be more pressure to get these out-of-pocket estimates, to more out-of-pocket actuals and whatever estimate or actual quote that is provided to patients or hospitals gonna be more held to that in terms of what they can bill and bill to the patient. So that’s going to be interesting to see how that all plays out here with this executive order. Kevin: Yeah, we’ll have to get with our folks and trademark that name Govi. I like the way that sounded so let me just push it one step further and pull in your thoughts on the No Surprises Act in Good Faith Estimates, which are often, because of the amount of work it takes to get Machine Readable Files produced and published, and then secondarily, the consumer displays, oftentimes GFEs are sort of left out of the discussion, but it’s President Trump’s signature on the on the No Surprises Act that gave birth to those. Do you have any thoughts on do you think we’ll see a stepped up enforcement of GFE regulations? Govi: I do think so. We sort of hit the pause button on the on the Good Faith Estimates, part of the No Surprises Act. So back in 2022, when it was required for all hospitals and providers to provide a Good Faith Estimate to those that are self-pay uninsured for any schedulable service. The plan was always to expand in that and not have it only apply to self-pay uninsured patients. The plan and the way the policy was written was that it also applied to those that have insurance. Whether you’re in-network or out of network. And the process would work that the healthcare provider or hospital would basically send that Good Faith Estimate, call up an advanced bill, over to the payer of the plan, and then the payer plan would send an advanced EOB to the patient, letting them know whether their insurance is in or out of network and what their out-of-pocket costs would likely be prior to services being scheduled. That Good Faith Estimate was also supposed to include expected charges from co-providers and others that are involved in the care that might not be part of the hospital or a provider, which is a really challenging feat on itself. So a lot of the policies were written, but the process was left out. So this is all, you know, part of the goal with Price Transparency, to give the patient more well-informed choices and to meet the spirit of intent. So I do think that we’ll start to see some more movement on that, which is, it’s been delayed for quite a bit, so maybe this is the push that it needs. Kevin: Yeah, I, I agree with you and it’s something that the professionals that are listening, don’t lose sight of that. Right. That’s a that’s an important element of this as well. You know this is, effectively this executive order is doubling down on the executive the Executive Order 13877, which was signed June 24th, 2019, with a forward looking compliance deadline of a couple of years. But this has been out there the No Surprises Act was signed the following year, 2020. And so, I think that what’s proving to be a slightly aggressive administration, maybe not so slightly, they’re going to take a hard look at the every element of these and that’s what this EO is doing. It’s directing these government departments to look at enforcement. And it’s got to, within 90 days of this order a time frame, so you’re talking about spring, for needing to be up and running and feeling good about where you are. Perhaps, maybe the way to think about it, just interested in your reaction to this is, if you were at all concerned about the quality of your output, be it your Machine Readable File, your GFEs, your consumer display, maybe now you take a second look at it and make sure you’re where you need to be. Govi: Right, right. I mean, this executive order is not prescriptive on what those increased enforcement actions would likely be. But I think, you know, for any hospitals or providers looking to do some due diligence and have protection, and not be in a mad scramble if they are put in a awkward or difficult position where their files or estimation system is not where it is up to be, should likely take steps now to confirm they’re in full compliance. We will also like, I think what also we’ll likely see as you kind of give a view into the future here and what this all is trending towards, is we’ve had some other there’s a few other bills out there, House bills, Senate bills, that have been kind of lag. One of them I’m thinking about is the Lower Costs for Transparency Act House Bill 5378, which about a year ago was passed the House and I believe it’s up in the still up for the Senate, this would you know it’s likely we’d see some movement on this. I mean the legislative process can be slow and unpredictable, but if this gets passed, that would expand Price Transparency to non-hospital locations such as your emergency surgery centers, imaging centers and so forth. We’ve already seen it happen in Minnesota. So some states aren’t waiting, they’re taking their own measures and moving forward. So it’s kind of interesting to see this come at at many different angles, you know, whether it’s the Republicans or Democrats or at the state or federal level. Kevin: Yeah, that’s great insight. And I think you’re right. I think that this has been primarily focused on hospitals and payers that don’t want to leave them out. You and I work primarily with hospitals, so that’s where our focus is. But, and they are the foundation often of the healthcare system, but by no means the only providers that submit bills to patients. And so I think it’s likely that we will see Price Transparency be expanded out and cover additional providers, and likely those that will have less resources to get to a place where they’re compliant. So could be a lot more of a struggle for everybody. So, let me just tell the audience before I wrap and I ask Govi one more question, we at Panacea, Govi and his team of experts actually produced a series of webinars on Machine Readable File compliance, and then also some practical uses of data and other things. Please visit our website to, if you’d like to review those. If you have any concerns about where you need to be, any questions about some of the technical elements, you’re likely to find the answers to those questions buried in those webinars, or reach out to us, we’re happy to talk to you. So Govi I’m going to wrap it. I’ll ask you to just one question and just drawing from your deep experience here. I mean, any advice that you have for the audience right now that that could be now concerned about where they are in their compliance journey relative to Price Transparency? Govi: Yes. I mean, aside from what is being discussed in terms of getting another potentially second set of eyes to look at your Price Transparency, client compliance, it does seem that there’s going to be more pressure towards being able to defend, you know, being able to defend your prices, as enforcement increases, compliance will increase will so will transparency and accessibility of your files. So just, it would be, it would probably be the right path right move to take a look at where do your, you know, where do your prices sit in line to your market. Do an assessment, and just be prepared in the event that you’re going to have more scrutiny, more scrutiny over what your rates are, what your prices are, there’s a lot more pressure on variation, you know, within the same geography. So I think I would make those recommendations, in addition to, you know, just double checking your compliance status. Kevin: That’s great, great advice. It’s a 1-2 punch. The first punch is compliance. The second is defend your prices. And that’s likely coming after that. So sage advice from an expert. So Govi, thank you. That was very insightful, appreciate you joining us. Govi: Thank you. Kevin: Before we wrap today’s episode, I just want to extend a huge thank you to our listeners for joining us on this journey. Your commitment to excellence in healthcare finance inspires us every day. We invite you to Subscribe. Leave a review and join the conversation on our social media channels. Your feedback is invaluable and we strive to bring you the most relevant and impactful content in the industry. I’m Kevin Chmura, and this has been Beyond the Bottom Line by Panacea. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes featuring our expert guests. And remember, when it comes to healthcare finance, every detail matters. Until next time, keep striving for excellence and driving innovation in healthcare. Thank you!