Articles Posted in Health Law

On July 12, 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”) released a statement proposing significant changes to Medicare that would modernize and restructure the Medicare program to deliver increased quality of care at a lower cost to beneficiaries. This will be done by utilizing a value-based healthcare system that works with modern-day technology. The proposal primarily alters the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program.

CMS’s proposal coincides with its Patients Over Paperwork initiative, because it reduces the paperwork requirements for billing, thereby enabling doctors to spend more time with their patients.  The proposed changes to the Physician Fee Schedule and Quality Payment Program will streamline documentation requirements to reduce the administrative burdens on providers. Generally, providers create medical records that use boiler plate language to satisfy Medicare billing requirements, which often contain few details specific to the patient and their personal stories. Allowing providers to designate a plan of care based upon what the provider determines from the time spent with the patient and not based upon documentation guidelines will significantly increase the quality of care.

If the proposal is effectuated, it will modernize payment policies so that telehealth will be more available to Medicare beneficiaries. When a beneficiary virtually contacts their provider (through telephone or other telecommunication devices) to determine whether they need and in-office visit or not, Medicare would cover this service. Additionally, there would be coverage for a physician’s time when they review images or videos sent to them for a diagnosis. CMS would also like to have a patient’s updated medical records follow the patient throughout the healthcare system. This would increase transparency and collaboration by allowing all of the patient’s providers to see the patient’s medical history in full.

Urine drug testing is medical protocol for patients prescribed opioid drugs in order to monitor compliance and expose possible drug abuse or diversion.  In the wake of the opioid crisis, there has been an increase in the frequency and cost of urine drug tests, resulting in a corresponding increase in spending by Medicare and private insurance on such tests.  Between 2011 and 2014, spending on urine drug screens and genetic tests by Medicare and private insurance quadrupled to an estimated $8.5 billion per year.

The increase in the cost of urine drug tests is attributable to more expensive and high-tech ways of running the tests.  Presently, laboratories are moving away from simple urine screenings and installing machines for urine drug tests. There is a financial incentive attached to machine tests; under Medicare rules, each drug tested for within a single specimen validity test may be billed individually.

The spike in reimbursement by Medicare and private insurance has caught the attention of the federal government.  In 2010, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) imposed stricter rules on billing for simple urine screens; however, these rules do not cover machine testing.  In addition, in 2011, the federal government settled with Millennium Health, LLC, one of the largest urine drug testing laboratories in the United States, for $256 million after it was alleged to have billed medically unnecessary urine drug and genetic tests.

In March of 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report titled “Many Medicare Claims for Outpatient Physical Therapy Services Did Not Comply With Medicare Requirements” [summary] (the “Report”) identifying millions of dollars of overpayments for outpatient physical therapy services and signaling potential for increased governmental scrutiny to practitioners within the discipline.

The Report revealed that an audit found $367 million in improper payments for outpatient physical therapy services between July 1 and December 31, 2013. The finding was based upon data extrapolation, in which the OIG reviewed 300 sample claims and determined that 184 of the claims (61.33%) did not comply with Medicare requirements for medical necessity, documentation, or coding.

The OIG directly faulted the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) for the overpayments, finding that the current controls in place are insufficient to prevent improper payments to providers. The OIG issued three recommendations to CMS in order to prevent future incorrect expenditures:

On March 22, 2018, the latest development in American Hospital Association (AHA) v. Azar (formerly referred to as AHA v Burwell) emerged as Judge Boasberg issued an order to have the AHA develop strategies to assist the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in reducing the Medicare appeals backlog. The request comes in response to a lack of effective action by HHS to reduce the number of backlogged appeals.

Major events in the case include:

• May 22, 2014: Initial complaint filed by the AHA, alleging that HHS was violating Federal law by failing to process appeals within the legally-mandated timeframes. The problem was and continues to be highlighted at the administrative law judge (ALJ) level of appeals, where wait times for the processing of claims regularly takes years;