Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

You could be liable for false claims submitted by those entities. Reassigning your Medicare payments to a third party may be old hat to your practice -- in fact, a 2008 OIG report indicated that 77 percent of practitioners have at least one reassignment on file. But have you ever considered the compliance implications of reassigning your benefits? The OIG has -- and the agency issued a warning last week telling practices to tighten up their reassignments. The facts: On Feb. 8, the OIG released an important alert to medical practices, informing them to "exercise caution when reassigning their Medicare payments," thanks to a recent case that blew open the potential for compliance issues when reassigning benefits. Docs Didn't Know Services Were Billed Under Their Names The OIG's alert stemmed from a recent settlement with eight physicians who violated the Civil Monetary Penalties Law, apparently without their direct knowledge. The eight physicians [...]