Wachler & Associates Health Law BlogOMHA Announces Appellant Forum for February 12 to Discuss Increasing Efficiency in the ALJ Hearing Program
On Wednesday, February 12, at 10:00 am EST, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA) will hold a Medicare Appellant Forum in the Cohen Auditorium of the Wilbur J. Cohen building at 330 Independence Ave. SW, Washington DC, 20024. The purpose of the forum will be to:
- Inform OMHA appellants on the status of OMHA operations;
- Discuss a number of initiatives designed to mitigate the growing backlog of OMHA-level appeals; and
- Suggest measures that appellants can take to make the administrative appeals process work more efficiently.
OMHA administers the nationwide Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) hearing program for Medicare claim and entitlement appeals under the Social Security Act. From 2010 to 2013, OMHA’s claims and entitlement workload has drastically increased to 184% of previous years. Despite this increase, the resources to adjudicate the new slew of appeals have remained relatively constant, and were recently reduced during budgetary sequestration. The OMHA reports that their backlog of pending appeals has grown from 92,000 claims for services and entitlement to 460,000 claims in just under two years, and that the rate of new appeals is increasing. While the OMHA’s Central Operations Division averaged around 1,250 claims per week in January 2012, the OMHA recently reported a rate of receipt of over 15,000 claims per week.
The OMHA has responded to this increase by taking measures to mitigate its workload increase and by pursuing additional opportunities to increase its efficiency. On July 15, 2013, OMHA temporarily suspended the assignment of most new requests for an ALJ hearing in order to adjudicate nearly 357,000 claims for Medicare services and entitlements already assigned to 65 Administrative Law Judges.
The February 12 Appellant Forum will address such efficiency measures, and solicit input and suggestions from the appellant community on reducing the existing appeals backlog and improving the OMHA’s processes.
Attendees must register online by 5:00 pm EST on Tuesday, January 28, and capacity will be limited to the first 400 registrants. OMHA is exploring the possibility of broadcasting the forum online as a webinar. Instructions for registering for the forum and additional event announcements can be found on OMHA’s website.
Andrew Wachler, managing partner of Wachler & Associates PC, will be among the attendees of the February 12th forum. If you have any questions regarding the information provided at the forum, or if you have a question you would like addressed, please contact an experienced healthcare attorney at Wachler & Associates at 248-544-0888 or wapc@wachler.com.