Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay
October 4, 2026 - Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation co-sponsored by the California Medical Association (CMA) and the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists (ACOG) District IX that will ensure equitable and fair compensation for physicians and health care providers delivering medically necessary services.
Authored by Akilah Weber Pierson, M.D., Senate Bill 1049 establishes a reasonable and fair timeline for physicians to correct minor billing errors without facing unwarranted financial penalties or delayed reimbursements.
Under the previous system, health plans were able to deny payment or issue massive overpayment demands based on correctable technical defects, such as documentation or coding errors, even when the underlying care was medically necessary and properly delivered. In many instances, health care providers were blocked from remedying these defects because they were informed of them after standard filing deadlines had expired. This structural flaw allowed health plans to enrich themselves by denying legitimate payments – sometimes spanning multiple years and totaling tens of thousands of dollars – over administrative technicalities at the direct expense of physicians who delivered essential care to patients.
SB 1049 directly addresses this problem by establishing a uniform right for providers to submit a corrected claim within 90 days following a health plan’s latest action, such as an overpayment notice or a denial, if the correction will resolve the issue. Furthermore, the legislation expressly prohibits health plans from rejecting these newly corrected claims based on expired original filing deadlines.
“SB 1049 is a win for doctors, health care providers, and, most importantly, patients, as this bill ensures that their care will not be interrupted with by minor technical issues,” said CMA president René Bravo, M.D. “We thank Senator Weber Pierson for introducing this commonsense fix to make our health care system more efficient, as well as Governor Newsom for signing it into law.”
By providing medical practices with a meaningful opportunity to cure minor technical errors before payment is recouped, SB 1049 will dramatically reduce avoidable conflicts that burden state regulators and enable efficient claims processing to reduce the administrative waste that can disrupt patient care.
In addition to co-sponsor ACOG District XI, SB 1049 received broad support from a coalition of health care organizations, including Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, the California Hospital Association and numerous specialty organizations.
Source: California Medical Association
