July 1, 2022
Great news! The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a permanent extension to the transition policy known as “grandmothered plans” for individual plans. These plans will no longer require an extension mid-year as in the past.
This means individual and families may keep their grandmothered health plans!
For more information on what types of health plans are available for Individuals and Families, give us a call at 520-721-4848.
June 29, 2022
Machine-readable files will be made available on the Blue Cross® Blue Shield® of Arizona (BCBSAZ) public website soon. Transparency in Coverage regulations requires insurers and group health plans to create machine-readable files that contain the negotiated rates for in-network providers and allowed amounts derived from historical claims for out-of-network providers and make them publicly available.
A machine-readable file is a digital representation of data or information in a file that can be imported or read by a computer system for further processing without human intervention. These files follow the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) defined layout and are in the CMS-approved format.
BCBSAZ will support customers as follows:
- Self-funded (Blue administered): BCBSAZ is publishing machine-readable files on the employers’ behalf for the benefits we administer and maintain.
- Fully insured: BCBSAZ is publishing machine-readable files on the employers’ behalf for the coverage we provide.
- CHS (network rental): BCBSAZ will make an in-network rate machine-readable file available for download as CHS clients will host or have another third-party host files on their behalf.
BCBSAZ Machine-Readable Files Homepage
The final link to access machine-readable files is below. Please note, that there are no active files at this time and the final files will post on July 1. In the upper right-hand corner, you can change location and network. Remember, it will look like the public BCBSAZ Find a Doctor page until machine-readable files are live on July 1.
Link to BCBSAZ Machine-Readable Files Search Homepage
Testing & Instructions
As we progress on having files ready for July 1, we’ll provide testing instructions in the next week to access sample machine-readable files available in a staging environment. This is to help you understand what information will appear in the final files and how you may access them.
