But timeline for correcting improperly paid claims unclear.
If you serve patients in a rural county using a blended MSA-CBSA code this year, you should finally be receiving the 5 percent rural add-on you're entitled to.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has added the blended wage index codes to the list of county codes eligible for the add-on, CMS says in March 10 Transmittal No. 887. There are 63 codes in 22 states that CMS originally left off the add-on eligibility list because they didn't start with "999" (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XV, No. 9).
The change was put into the Medicare claims processing system by March 13, the transmittal says. Intermediaries were supposed to start processing claims with the new add-on list after the installation.
Intermediaries will go back and adjust the claims they paid improperly due to the code confusion, CMS instructs. The agency specifies no timeline for making the adjustments.
The transmittal is online at
www.cms.hhs.gov/transmittals/downloads/R887CP.pdf.
• The U.S. Senate March 16 passed the budget resolution that includes no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or other entitlement spending programs. The Senate Budget Committee approved the budget blueprint March 9 (see Eli's HCW, Vol. XV, No. 11).
The Senate narrowly rejected an amendment from Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that called for $10 billion in cuts over five years for programs overseen by the Senate Finance Committee, such as Medicare. • CMS isn't providing enough information on Program Safety Contractors in its PSC evaluation reports, the HHS Office of Inspector General blasts in a recent report on the contractors. The reports "contained minimal information about [PSC] achievements related to detecting and deterring fraud and abuse under benefit integrity task orders," the OIG criticizes.
The OIG wants CMS to include quantitative information about PSCs' fraud and abuse detection and deterrence activities in the reports. But CMS argues that including such information "may compromise investigations and create perverse incentives."
The report is at
http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-03-04-00050.pdf. • Home care providers can expect another wave of confusion over the Part D drug benefit from patients who are being passively enrolled in drug plans.
"CMS is facilitating the enrollment of certain beneficiaries into prescription drug plans," the agency says in a release. CMS has begun mailing letters to 1.2 million people with limited income and resources who are enrolled in other federal assistance programs such as Supplemental Security Income and Medicare Savings Programs, as well as beneficiaries who have applied for and been approved for a low-income subsidy for the Part D benefit.
"The letters let the beneficiary know in which Medicare prescription drug plan they will be enrolled by CMS if they take no action before April 30," the agency says. Unless they enroll on their own during March, [...]
