Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

A trio of health care provider advocacy groups is beseeching the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to back off on a controversial new policy on Medicare bad debt payments. In comments on CMS's Feb. 10 bad debt proposal - which would slash allowable bad debt payments to critical access hospitals, rural health clinics and long-term care facilities - the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Health Association and the Federation of American Hospitals attacked the proposal as legally unsound and potentially devastating to already cash-strapped provider types. All three groups urged CMS to rescind the proposal.