Monthly Archives: October 2020
Fairness in Medicare: Post Payment Review in the Courts of Equity
As children, we say things are or are not fair. But what is fair? In law, fairness is “tried” in the courts of equity rather than law. Equitable estoppel and the defense of laches are arguments made in the courts of equity. Is it fair if you’ve been billing Medicare for services that you were told by CMS was billable and reimburse-able – for years – then, unexpectantly, CMS says, “Hey, providers, what you were told was reimburse-able, actually is not. In fact, providers, even though you relied on our own guidance, we will cease and desist from paying you going forward AND…we are now going back three years to retroactively collect the money that we should never have paid you…”
How is this fair? Yet, many of you have probably encountered RAC or MAC audits and a post payment review. What I described is a post payment review. Let me give you an example of a nationwide, claw-back by CMS to providers.
On January 29, 2020, CMS announced that beginning March 1, 2020, MACs will reject claims for HCPCS code L8679 submitted without an appropriate HCPCS/CPT surgical procedure code. Claims for HCPCS code L8679 billed with an appropriate HCPCS/CPT surgical code will be suspended for medical review to verify that coverage, coding, and billing rules have been met.
At least according to the announcement, it sounded like CMS instructed the MACs to stop reimbursing L8679 going forward, but I read nothing about going back in time to recoup.
In the last few months, my team has been approached by chiropractors and holistic medical providers who received correspondence from a UPIC and their MACs that they owe hundreds of thousands of dollars for L8679 going back three years prior to CMS’ 2020 announcement to cease using the code.
In this particular instance, many of the providers who had been using the L8679 code did so under the direct guidance of CMS, MACs, and other agents over the years. It becomes a fairness question. Should CMS be able to recoup for claims paid for services rendered when CMS had informed the providers it was the correct code for years?
Another factor to consider is that many of these providers are victims of an intentional scheme to sell devices with the false advice that the devices are covered by Medicare. Litigation has already been filed against the company. In a case filed December 6, 2019, in US District Court of the Eastern District of PA, Neurosurgical Care LLC sued Mark Kaiser and his current company, Doc Solutions LLC, claiming that Kaiser’s company falsely marketed the device as being covered by Medicare. Stivax is a “non-narcotic and minimally invasive form of neurostimulation” which is represented as “one of the only FDA approved microchip controlled microstimulation devices for treating back, joint and arthritic pain.”
Recall that, over the years, CMS paid for these approved procedures with no problem. This situation begins to leave the realm of the courts of law and into the court of equity. It becomes an equitable issue. Is there fairness in Medicare?
There may not be fairness, but there is an administrative appeal process for health care providers! Use it! Request redeterminations!
ACO Oversight by CMS Questioned by OIG
No one is free from audits. Even auditors get audited.
When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) audits auditors, however, the auditors get recommendations for changes, not the million-dollar penalties that healthcare providers receive.
In September 2020, OIG released an audit report of the Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). There were 472 ACOs in America as of 2017, per the report. To those ACOs that were not audited for this September 2020 OIG report, expect audits to come. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has instructed the Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs), Comprehensive Error Rate Testing (CERT) auditors, Unified Program Integrity Contractors (UPICs), and Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) to audit ACOs.
These audits for monetary penalties will be dissimilar from audits by OIG, which wielded recommendations. ACOs are large entities: groups of doctors, hospitals, and other providers that come together to give coordinated high-quality care to Medicare beneficiaries.
In 2017, ACOs served approximately 9 million beneficiaries under the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). Of all the ACOs, 159 were eligible for shared savings payments, and received approximately $799 million. Of the remaining ACOs, 11 were liable for shared losses, and 302 were neither eligible to receive shared savings payments nor liable for shared losses, because they generally did not reduce healthcare costs (or they chose not to participate).
OIG found weaknesses in the oversight of ACOs, which are required to report data on 31 quality measures through three methods of submission:
- A patient experience-of-care survey (eight measures);
- Claims and administrative data (eight measures); and
- The designated CMS web portal (15 measures).
For the September 2020 OIG Report, 159 ACOs were required to select a CMS-certified vendor of their choice. You can learn more about this by listening to my recent webcast: “SNFs & COVID-19: New Audits Coming Soon.”
These CMS-certified vendors would contact the ACOs’ patients for a survey or poll, kind of like the follow-up surveys that you get after a seminar. Sometimes the students rating the teachers marks the best truth-teller of effectiveness.
The patient survey reported eight points of quality measures to CMS on the ACOs’ behalf. The vendors collected the data through mail and telephone surveys. The auditors would mail a questionnaire, and if that went unanswered, they would place a follow-up telephone call.
Twelve auditors conducted the 2017 audit of the ACOs’ patients. They surveyed approximately 400,000 beneficiaries and reported all patient survey data for those who responded.
Prior to 2019, non-medical home care agencies did not have a role in the Medicare Advantage (MA) landscape. After a variety of policy chances, they now have an opportunity to contract with MA plans through two major pathways.
The OIG report found the following weaknesses in CMS’s supervision of ACOs:
- CMS did not ensure that its contractor provided feedback reports in time to enable survey vendors to include and evaluate quality assurance plans regarding all of the changes implemented to address issues identified.
- CMS did not ensure that its contractor reviewed survey instruments translated into other languages.
OIG recommended that CMS increase supervision to confirm changes and collect client feedback. It is my opinion that ACO audits will increase.
Programming Note: Knicole Emanuel, Esq. is a permanent panelist on Monitor Mondays. Listen to her RAC Report every Monday at 10 a.m. EST.
