July 26, 2024
The Government Affairs and Public Policy (GAPP) Board is in town drafting the 2025 Public Policy Agenda. They are reviewing all of the comments and input submitted by members to help lay the foundation for ASHA’s advocacy priorities for next year.
Yesterday, several GAPP Board members spent the day on Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers and congressional staff about a wide variety of issues important to audiologists and SLPs. Visit ASHA’s Take Action page to join their call.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its proposed 2025 payment policies that highlight the need for continued congressional action in 2024. The 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule has several updates that will impact audiologists and SLPs, including a proposed 2.8% payment cut, which could grow to nearly 9% when combined with multiple other budget control mechanisms that Congress controls. CMS has also opted not to add audiology and speech-language pathology related services to the permanent telehealth list. Learn more about the key provisions in the proposed rule and ask Congress to act here.
CMS also issued the outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) rule for 2025, which proposes hospital outpatient departments receive a 2.6% payment update among other items. One of the key issues in the rule is CMS’s proposal to align rules related to telehealth services with those in the physician fee schedule. Other items of interest include quality reporting, prior authorization, and the cost of personal protective equipment. Learn more about the proposed rule and ask Congress to make audiologists and SLPs permanent telehealth providers here.
Rhode Island’s governor signed legislation making Rhode Island part of the Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology Interstate Compact (ASLP-IC). The interstate compact will be operationalized in 2025. See the ASLP-IC website for updates on its progress.
In spring 2023, the Department of Education released a proposed rule that would remove the requirement for public agencies, like schools, to obtain parental consent prior to accessing for the first time a child's public benefits or insurance (e.g., Medicaid, Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)) to provide or pay for required IDEA Part B services. Given extensive feedback from many stakeholders, including ASHA [PDF], the Department put the rule on hold while it addresses the many issues the opposing comments made.
ASHA has heard from members that Medicaid services are often denied when school-based services are offered on the same day or even just to the same child whose Medicaid insurance is billed across multiple settings. If you work in the outpatient setting and have experienced Medicaid denials of covered services based on services supplied in the schools that are also billed to Medicaid, please share your experiences here to help us collect important data.
Advocacy win! ASHA helped shape a resolution that U.S. Representatives Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) introduced to support efforts for raising awareness about dyspraxia. ASHA President Tena McNamara was quoted in the sponsors’ press release on the resolution, noting ASHA’s support for “efforts to improve coverage and reimbursement for services provided by audiologists and speech-language pathologists that facilitate early diagnosis and interventions for conditions like dyspraxia that may adversely impact communication.”