ASHA STAR Report

By Carrie Kerr

Published October 2023 in the ISHA Voice

Happy Fall, everyone. I have continued to attend monthly meetings with ASHA as the State Advocate for Reimbursement (STAR). These meetings provide an opportunity to learn from other state representatives about trends and successful advocacy efforts related to billing and reimbursement for speech-language pathologists and audiologists. It also allows us to turn to ASHA for support on issues important to us in the state of Illinois.

Toward the end of the spring and throughout the summer, we monitored the end of the Public Health Emergency. Four million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid across the country since the end of the public health emergency – mostly due to procedural requirements (as of August 2023). You can see some data snapshots of how the public health emergency unwinding is going and what changes are happening in map form here.

ASHA’s 5th annual payer summit was held October 5-6, 2023 and has 23 confirmed representatives from state Medicaid agencies, Medicaid MCOs, and commercial plans. This is a meeting where payers and ASHA staff come together to discuss coverage challenges and opportunities alike. ASHA will share resources with payers and find out more about their policies.
You can find ASHA’s comments to the Department of Education’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding removing parental consent to bill Medicaid for school-based services here. If you have questions about ASHA’s position, please let me know.

You can find ASHA resources related to non-compete agreements at the bullets below.

• Understanding Non-Compete Agreements: Considerations for Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists (asha.org)
• Non-Compete Agreements: Contract Considerations for Audiologists and Speech-Language Pathologists
• Exploring Alternatives to Non-Compete Agreements
• As FTC Considers Ban on Non-Compete Agreements, New ASHA Resources Offer Guidance
• ASHA Voices: The Non-Compete Agreement Faces an Uncertain Future

Should you have issues or questions that you would like me to bring to these monthly ASHA STAR meetings, please feel free to contact me at carrie.kerr.ck@gmail.com.

Carrie Kerr is the Illinois STAR and a pediatric SLP specializing in AAC. She is active with the Peoria Area Speech Language Hearing Association and serves on several ISHA committees.