Florida’s Governor Charlie Crist signed Senate Bill No. 1122 last month, which effectively requires all insurers to remit payment to the designated provider of services if there is an executed assignment of benefits. Florida Statute §627.638 has been amended, effective July 1, 2009, and prevents payors from relying on a loophole in the old statute, which allowed reimbursement for a medical claim to be sent to the patient rather than the provider even though the provider accepted assignment of benefits. This, of course, placed an undue burden on the provider to chase the patient for the reimbursement. Pay careful attention to Box 27 on the HCFA and Box 53 on the UB-04. If you want to receive reimbursement directly from the payor and you have a signed assignment of benefit form on file, make sure the appropriate field contains a “Y”. Caveat: This great statute may be repealed on July 1, 2012 if it is found that this change has caused a detriment to the state group health plan in a net loss of physicians from its preferred provider plan network and, as a result, an increase in costs to the state group health plan.