MHPAEA Thought Leaders Summit

The MHPAEA Thought Leaders Summit brings together leaders from government agencies, health plans, health plan coalitions, employer plan sponsors/coalitions, research and academic institutions and patient and provider advocates

On July 25, 2023, EBSA, along with the Departments of HHS and the Treasury, released a series of documents related to the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA):

  • MHPAEA proposed rules
  • Technical Release on NQTLs related to network composition
  • 2023 MHPAEA Report to Congress and enforcement fact sheet.
  • FY 2022 MHPAEA enforcement fact sheet

The NPRM and related documents are available here.

URAC Mental Health Parity Summit

Comment Period

There is a 60-day public comment period and comments on the Technical Release are due by October 2, 2023.

The Summit

URAC is convened a group of mental health parity thought leaders for a roundtable discussion to gather and disseminate a unified set of comments in response to the Proposed Rules.

Summit Details

  • Date: September 7, 2023, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
  • Location: 1220 L Street NW, Suite 900, Washington, DC 20005

Since the passage of the MHPAEA in 2008, health insurance benefits and managed care practices have undergone significant changes. At the same time, many stakeholders agree that there continue to be meaningful opportunities for improvement in access and quality of mental health and substance use disorder (MHSUD) services.

Thought leadership is needed to better identify and explain the NQTL analyses and documentation that are needed so parity laws can be administratively efficient for plans and regulators and, most importantly, result in meaningful improvement in access to quality MHSUD services.

URAC Mental Health Parity Summit

Summit objectives and deliverables

The primary objective of this MHPAEA Thought Leaders Summit is to foster consensus regarding:

  • The identification of the most meaningful process/outcome measures for use in the “in-operation” phase of NQTL comparative analyses and compliance oversight (“Operations Measures”)
  • Alignment on clear and viable technical specifications for the consistent implementation of Operations Measures across markets
  • The identification of benchmarks for each Operations Measure that would provide a rebuttable presumption of non-discrimination (or “safe-harbor”) in the applicable NQTL.

Attendees at the Summit will be charged with developing:

  • A list of key Operations Measures that regulators should require to be reported for each core NQTL type and how those measures should be incorporated into the NQTL process
  • Technical specifications for each Operations Measure
  • Benchmarks for each Operations Measure that participants agree could constitute a rebuttable presumption of non-discrimination or safe harbor for NQTL compliance documentation