As businesses deal with their own HR compliance issues, a new analysis indicates that health insurers are dealing with their own set of compliance matters.
While the full implementation of the Patient Protection and Afforable Care Act has yet to go into effect, portions of it have, such as the provision that requires insurers to give their customers a Summary of Benefits, or more commonly referred to as SBCs. However, a fair number of insurers haven't been able to abide by this mandate.
According to products and consulting company Tyrula, as many as 61 percent of all insurance companies did not have SBCs available to customers through their website. This was found among more than one-third of large insurers, 36 percent of insurers medium in size and 28 percent of insurers that had less than one million members.
"It's not surprising that a high percentage of health plans have not made their SBCs available online," said Manu Uppal, CEO and co-founder of Tyrula.
He added that because the compliance issue is not an easy task, many insurers may put off becoming compliant until 2013. Even though the SBC provision recently went into effect, the U.S. Department of Labor has indicated that insurers will not be levied a fine if they are "working diligently and in good faith to comply."
This may serve as a reminder for business owners to ensure they're adhering to their company's compliance statutes and that the company's employees are aware of them.
