On January 1, 2022, new federal regulations that seek to put a stop to surprise medical billing practices went into effect for the first time. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) celebrated this event with a press release titled, “HHS Kicks Off New Year with New Protections from Surprise Medical Bills.” In that release, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra touted the rules as the “most critical consumer protection law since the Affordable Care Act.” Alongside the press release, HHS also released a fact sheet targeting consumers titled, “No Surprises: Understand Your Rights Against Surprise Medical Bills.” Clearly, these promotional efforts demonstrate the federal government’s commitment to educating patients and consumers about the new rules and the protections they offer. Meanwhile, on the flip side of the compliance ledger, hospitals, health systems and insurers have spent the past several months advocating for changes to the rules while also frantically preparing for implementation. This comes as no surprise (no pun intended!) given the impact these rules will have on some hospital and facility billing and collection policies. But beyond patients, hospitals, and insurers, the rules will also have a major impact on physicians. With that in mind, for those physician groups that are still wondering what these rules mean and why they are important to understand, here’s a Physician’s Guide to HHS’s New Surprise Billing Rules. Generally speaking, a “surprise medical bill” comes when a patient receives care from a provider or facility and afterwards gets a bill that includes charges that are higher than expected. This most commonly occurs when: (a) patients receive emergency care from out-of-network providers or facilities (i.e. when an ambulance takes an unconscious patient to an emergency room at a hospital that is out-of-network with the patient’s health insurance coverage), or (b) patients receive care from ancillary out-of-network providers during scheduled visits to in-network facilities (i.e. when the anesthesiology services for a procedure performed by an in-network surgeon at an in-network facility are billed as out-of-network services).