Home Health & Hospice Week

Extended deadline, lower interest rates are under consideration.

Reminder: When COVID-19 hit, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services quickly made accelerated payments available to many providers that wanted them under liberalized qualifying rules (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXIX, No. 12-13). At the time, CMS said it would start recouping the payments 120 calendar days from issuing them. In August, HHH Medicare Administrative Contractors said they were going to start to offset claims to recoup such payments (see HCW by AAPC, Vol. XXIX, No. 32).

But this month, providers noticed that their MACs didn’t seem to be taking back the payments.

Now, CMS Administrator Seema Verma has confirmed that CMS officially is not recouping the payments quite yet. Verma told Modern Healthcare that CMS is waiting to see what Congress does before initiating offsets to claims.

In the works: On Sept. 22, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 8337, a continuing resolution that would fund the government through Dec. 11 and avoid a shutdown. Among many provisions, the bill would give Medicare providers a year before recouping accelerated payments.

After the year reprieve is up, Medicare would then collect 25 percent of the payment in the first three months, 50 percent of the payment in the next six months, and the final 25 percent of the payment in the last three months, according to the legislation. Providers would have 29 months total before being required to pay the balance in full.