CMS to Hold Physician Claims

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has instructed its contractors to hold claims containing services paid under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) for the first 10 business days of January (Jan. 1 through Jan. 15) for 2010 dates of service. CMS says this should have minimum impact on provider cash flow because, under current law, clean electronic claims are not paid any sooner than 14 calendar days (29 days for paper claims) after the date of receipt. Meanwhile, all claims for services delivered on or before Dec. 31, 2009, will be processed and paid under normal procedures.

After 10 business days, contractors will begin releasing held claims into processing under the fee schedule which implements current law. This, of course, could result in claims being processed with the negative 21.2 percent update. If a new law is enacted which changes the negative update effective Jan. 1, CMS will correctly process claims under the new law and, if necessary, CMS is prepared to automatically reprocess most of those claims which have already been processed at the lower rate.

Under the Medicare statute, Medicare payments to physicians and other affected providers are based on the lesser of the actual charge or the MPFS amount.  Providers who submit charges that are greater than the negative 2010 MPFS will automatically have their claims reprocessed.