November 26, 2019
Senate Bill 1264, the state’s transformative legislation to protect consumers from surprise medical bills, directs the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) to select a benchmarking database for use in arbitration cases. FAIR Health was the only organization that responded to TDI’s search survey that met all the legislation’s requirements.
The selection is contingent on TDI and FAIR Health reaching an agreement on data collection and use.
TDI performed a comprehensive selection process to identify a database that could provide the data required by SB 1264 and meet the legislation’s requirements on conflicts of interest. As part of the search:
- TDI researched benchmarking databases that were certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as part of its qualified entity program. These databases meet federal standards for privacy and security.
- TDI sent a survey to nine databases that had either Texas or national data.
- TDI received and evaluated three responses. Only FAIR Health met all the requirements.