BATON ROUGE, La. (KLFY) — La. Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon announced he has issued an emergency rule to increase the state’s hospital bed capacity at 24-hour acute care hospitals during the current COVID-19 surge.
Donelon said the rule facilitates insurance coverage of care provided in step-down facilities such as small rural hospitals. Donelon issued a similar rule in 2020 as hospitals approached a breaking point due to the pandemic, “but the situation today is much worse.”
Emergency Rule 46, as it is known, requires health insurance providers to issue coverage for patients who are transferred from major hospitals to appropriate step-down facilities to open acute care beds. The rule allows acute care hospitals to discharge recovering patients to appropriate alternative settings, freeing up beds to accept new patients. Normally, hospital transfers require prior authorization from insurance. Emergency Rule 46 ensures that patient transfers can occur smoothly and without disrupting facility reimbursement. Patients who are transferred will pay the same cost-sharing amount that they would have paid in an acute care hospital.
“We need to make sure our hospitals can deliver the care they need at this critical time,” Donelon said. “This insurance rule should help make additional space available.”
Currently six out of the Louisiana Department of Health’s nine regions have more than 85% of their intensive care unit beds full, and an additional two are over 80% capacity.
