Welcome to HCRA Letter

Dear Payor:

Re: New York Health Care Reform Acts of 1996 and 2000 (HCRA)

Thank you for electing to be a participating direct payor in the New York State (NYS) Public Goods Pool established by the Health Care Reform Acts of 1996 and 2000 (HCRA). As a newly elected direct payor, you are required to meet certain obligations in accordance with Sections 2807-j, 2807-s and 2807-t of the NYS Public Health Law.

Under the HCRA, entities that pay on behalf of their plan participants for health care services delivered by certain designated providers in NYS, have a choice whether to file an election application to make public goods surcharge payments at reduced rate levels directly to the Office of Pool Administration (OPA), or pay surcharges directly to designated providers at substantially higher rates.

Your company has filed a valid election application to make payments directly to the OPA at a reduced surcharge rate. With this advantage come some conditions under which the application was accepted. One of these is to file Public Goods Pool reports electronically, regardless of whether any payments are due. If you use a third party administrator (TPA) that has elected to participate in the Public Goods Pool, your TPA may file the reports on your behalf. You should contact your TPA directly if you have any questions regarding your report filing obligations, or if you have questions regarding this mailing. If you plan on filing these reports on your own behalf, use the secure user ID and password previously issued to you by the OPA. To facilitate the electronic filing process, a website has been established here.

In an effort to disseminate information in a more timely manner, the HCRA program will, whenever possible, communicate information via email. Therefore, it is very important to keep your email addresses current. You can update your email addresses through the "Maintain Email Addresses" option available in the website listed above. Please be aware, however, that if you have a "spam blocker" active on your PC, you will need to allow the OPA email address to pass through to the intended recipient.

In addition, it is strongly recommended that you frequent the Department´s HCRA website at www.health.ny.gov/regulations/hcra/ to view the "What´s New" section as well as other valuable sections on this site.

If you have any questions after referencing the resources noted above, please feel free to contact a HCRA representative at (315) 671-3800.

Sincerely,

Emily Hoops-Darling
Bureau Director
Division of Finance & Rate Setting