Hospitals and health insurance companies will bear the brunt of several new legal requirements taking effect on January 1, 2025. These requirements stem from the 2024 legislative session of the Connecticut General Assembly where lawmakers and the committees overseeing health care and insurance matters reacted to several issues affecting the day-to-day operations of Connecticut providers and the lives of the patients they treat. The full summary of these laws is accessible at this link and includes the following:
- In an effort to better understand the factors causing overcrowding in hospital emergency departments and reduce wait times, a requirement that hospitals analyze certain data regarding emergency department admissions and develop policies to improve efficiency;
- A new statute authorizing hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers to monitor and report on the time and efforts necessary to secure pre-authorizations from health care carriers;
- A new law prohibiting certain health care and medical malpractice carriers from failing to reimburse and/or allow network access to non-specialty health care providers based solely on the provider’s decision not to maintain specialty certification;
- New obligations on hospitals to have their cybersecurity plans audited on an annual basis by an independent cybersecurity auditor to address the continued threat of ransomware attacks in the health care space;
- In the continuing effort to combat both natural and synthetic opioid use in the State, a new requirement for hospitals treating patients for a non-fatal overdose of an opioid drug to administer, with patient consent, a toxicology screening of the patient as medically appropriate, and report the screening results to the state Department of Public Health; and
- In what may be another sign of Connecticut’s need to address an aging population, new patient accessibility standards for hospitals and group practices of nine or more physicians and/or advanced practice registered nurses.
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