Monthly Archives: June 2022
A New Associate Joins Practus’ Health Care Team: Ryan Hargrave!!
Attorney Ryan Hargrave joined the Practus Health Care Litigation team on June 1, 2022. Ryan comes from a career of litigation in the State of North Carolina. He began his career in 2016 as a Prosecutor for the State of North Carolina, Guilford County. There he gained valuable experience from which he used as he moved to defending clients. He served as the Lead Trial Attorney at Triad Legal Group before joining Graystar Legal as the Senior Associate Attorney.
Ryan obtained his undergraduate degree at Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC., where he received a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Biology. Ryan has always had a keen interest in health care which has followed him throughout his career. He is locally known as the “Drug Lawyer” for his focus in the defense of drug-related crimes. He has a reputable proficiency in Cannabis Law, Criminal Law, and Civil Law across State and Federal Courts. Ryan has extensive trial experience that he brings to the Health Care Litigation team at Practus.
Ryan lives in North Carolina with his family, spending his time working out, making financial investments, and beginning his non-profit business, “Colored Money”. His non-profit will focus on teaching young boys and girls the value of money as a vehicle to achieve wealth, making smart investments, and how to achieve financial freedom. He is a big Georgia football fan and even has an English Bulldog that could serve as the team’s mascot.
Note from me:
I expect Ryan to dovetail and expand my Medicare and Medicaid regulatory compliance practice because his litigation experience will directly help me in litigation natters, but, also, his criminal litigation experience will also allow us to represent more White Collar Crime clients, including Medicare and Medicaid fraud accusations, False Claims Act, Stark, and Anti-Kickback alleged violations.
We are happy that he is here!
CMS Rulings Are Not Law; Yet Followed By ALJs
Lack of medical necessity is one of the leading reasons for denials during RAC, MAC, TPE, and UPIC audits. However, case law dictates that the treating physician should be allowed deference with the decision that medical necessity exists because the Medicare and/or Medicaid auditor never had the privilege to see the recipient.
However, recent ALJ decisions have gone against case law. How is that possible? CMS creates “Rules” – I say that in air quotes – these Rules are not promulgated, but are binding on anyone under CMS’ umbrella. Guess what? That includes the ALJs for Medicare appeals. As an example, the “treating physician” Rule is law based on case law. Juxtapose, CMS’ Ruling 93-l. It states that no presumptive weight should be assigned to a treating physician’s medical opinion in determining the medical necessity of inpatient hospital and skilled nursing facility services. The Ruling adds parenthetically that the Ruling does not “by omission or implication” endorse the application of the treating physician rule to services not addressed in the Ruling. So, we get a decision from an ALJ that dismisses the treating physician rule.
The ALJ decision actually said: Accordingly, I find that the treating physician rule, standing alone, provides no basis for coverage.
This ALJ went against the law but followed CMS Rulings.
CMS Rulings, however, are not binding. CMS Rulings aren’t even law. Yet the CMS Rulings, according to CMS, are binding onto the entities that are under the CMS umbrella. This means that the Medicare appeals process, which include the redeterminations, the reconsiderations, the ALJ decisions, and the Medicare Appeals Councils’ decisions are all dictated by these non-law, CMS Rulings, which fly in the face of actual law. ALJs uphold extrapolations based on CMS Rulings because they have to. But once you get to a federal district court judge, who are not bound by CMS, non-law, rulings, you get a real Judge’s decision, and most extrapolations are thrown out if the error rate is under 50%.
Basically, if you are a Medicare provider, you have to jump through the hoops of 4 levels of appeals that is not dictated by law, but by an administration that is rewarded for taking money from providers on the pretense of FWA. Most providers do not have the financial means to make it to the 5th level of appeal. So, CMS wins by default.
Folks, create a legal fund for your provider entity. You have got to appeal and be able to afford it. That is the only way that we can change the disproportionately unfair Medicare appeal process that providers must endure now.
Audit the Medicare Payors…It’s Not Always the Providers That Commit Fraud
Today, I am going to write about America’s managed care problem. We always talk about providers getting audited. It is about time that the payors get audited. In particular, for Medicaid, States contract with managed care organizations, which are prepaid, and, for Medicare, Medicare Advantage companies, which are prepaid.
Managed care in Medicare is MA organizations. Managed care in Medicaid is MCOs. These MCOs and MAs need to be held accountable for the misuse of funds.
Today, capitated, managed care is the dominant way in which states deliver services to Medicaid enrollees. And MA is becoming the dominant way to receive Medicare.
Under these prepaid programs, these private companies are paid a flat fee per month depending on the number of consumers to provide whatever care is required for patients based on age, gender, geography and health risk factors. The more diagnoses a person has, the more the company is prepaid. To compensate plans and providers for potential costs of care for individual patients with long-term conditions such as diabetes, heart disease or cancer, Medicare boosts the monthly payment to Medicare Advantage plans under a “risk adjustment” for each additional condition. The system differs from the traditional “fee for service” payment, in which Medicare pays hospitals and doctors directly each time they provide a service.
If companies add more risk adjustment codes to a Medicare Advantage beneficiary’s medical record to receive higher payment — but don’t spend money on the additional care — they make more money. Same as MCOs denying care or terminating providers, the tax dollars line the executive pockets instead of reimbursing providers for providing medically necessary care.
Maybe the answer is remaining with the fee-for service model. Prepaying entities creates a financial incentive to bolster beneficiaries’ health problems then cross your fingers that the health problems never come to fruition either because the beneficiary remains healthy or the health problem was fabricated.
MCOs and MA companies must be supervised by the single agency. These companies cannot have the ability to refuse medically necessary services or terminate provider at will for whatever reason with no repercussions. It’s not fair to the recipients or providers. Maybe it’s time to switch our telescopic lens from auditing providers to auditing MCOs and MAs. Let’s get these RAC, ZPIC, and TPE auditors focused on the stewards of our tax dollars, the prepaid entities.
42 CFR §431.10 dictates a single state agency for Medicaid, which is the Department in each State. CMS is the single agency in Medicare. CMS and State Departments are ultimately responsible for the private MCOs and MAs, but really are allowing these companies autonomy to the deficit of our tax dollars.
If you recall, earlier this year, The American Hospital Association urged the Justice Department to use its authority under the False Claims Act to create a fraud task force to investigate commercial insurers that routinely deny patients access to services. This was due to the April 2022 OIG report that “Some Medicare Advantage Organization Denials of Prior Authorization Requests Raise Concerns about Beneficiary Access to Medically Necessary Care.”
Instead of audits of providers or concurrently in audits of providers, we need to audit the payors. Both MCOs and MAs. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
