Billing for Associates Fraught with Risk

ACO-Payment-300x225You’ve hired a new doctor to join your practice, but it will take several months to get the new doctor on your insurance plans and to add him or her to your group practice.  What do you do?  Can you bill for the new doctor’s services under your own provider name or number?  Can you hold the billing and submit it at a later date?

Billing for the new doctor’s services under the name or provider number of a physician who did not actually perform the service is fraud.  It’s as simple as that.  And it’s a serious offense, punishable as a criminal offence, regardless of the payer involved.  In other words, it’s not true to say “Well, it’s ok to do with HMOs, but not Medicare.”  It’s fraud for every payer.  And, with federal payers, it’s a federal crime!  So what do you do?

Physicians are very limited with respect to Medicare and Medicaid patients.  The new doctor must be added to the practice’s provider number, especially if the practice provides “designated health services” such as PT, rehab, clinical lab and diagnostic imaging.  Most practices time the hiring of the new doctor with adding him or her to the provider number and also ensuring that the new doctor is contracted with various payers, all of which can take several months.

There may be a little more flexibility with respect to PPOs and HMOs, though this is tricky.  These payers are usually adamant about credentialing the new doctor and about having him or her sign a participating provider agreement before providing services to their insureds.  In some very limited circumstances, a payer may expedite the process and may even suggest a billing arrangement that would otherwise constitute insurance fraud, but physicians still need to be careful with these arrangement.  When a payer suggests such an arrangement, it is absolutely essential that the proposal and agreement be in writing and review to ensure regulatory compliance.  Otherwise, the practice and the doctors involved may be subject to fraud based claims—e.g. violations of the state insurance laws and even the federal False Claims Act.

 

Supreme Court Weighing Healthcare Reform Law

So many questions, so few answers. But the answers are coming! Here are some of our favorite stories out right now:

Via Yahoo News, Liz Goodwin, The Lookout

Could President Obama’s sweeping health care reform law survive if the court strikes down the requirement that all Americans buy insurance?

The short answer is yes — but insurance companies certainly won’t be happy about it.

Both Justice Department lawyers and their challengers agree that the individual mandate is not “separable” from the rest of the law, which means the rest of the law can’t survive if the individual mandate is surgically removed by the court.

The lower courts have been split on the question, but one of them, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in August that only the mandate should be struck down, leaving the rest of the law’s provisions — including an expansion of Medicaid to cover all low-income people and federal subsidies for lower-income and middle-class people to buy insurance — in place.

That decision no doubt sent shivers down the spines of some insurance executives. Striking down the mandate could be a nightmare scenario for the health insurance industry, since the rest of the law compels them to accept sick customers and to not charge higher premiums based on a customer’s health, age or gender. Sick customers would flood the insurance market and drive up costs, while young, healthy uninsured people would take their chances and not buy coverage, in what insurers worry would be a “death spiral” of rising costs.

Via The Associated Press, Boston Herald 

DONALD B. VERRILLI JR.

Verrilli is solicitor general of the United States, the government’s official representative in front of the Supreme Court. He was confirmed to his position last June as the replacement for Justice Elena Kagan after serving as associate deputy attorney general and an associate White House counsel in the Obama administration. A graduate Columbia Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Law Review, he was a law clerk for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and a partner at Jenner & Block, where he co-chaired the firm’s Supreme Court practice. He has argued more than a dozen times before the Supreme Court, and worked as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law School from 1992 through 2008. In 1994, as special counsel to President Bill Clinton, he assisted in the confirmation process for Justice Stephen Breyer.

Official biography: http://www.justice.gov/osg/meet-osg.html

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PAUL CLEMENT

Clement is a former solicitor general, having served in that position for President George W. Bush. When confirmed, he was the youngest solicitor general in 115 years at age 38. Clement graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School one year behind Obama, and clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. He has argued more than 55 cases at the Supreme Court, and served as the chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights. A partner at Bancroft PLLC, he is a Georgetown University law professor and a former partner at King & Spalding. He resigned from there after the firm decided not to continue its representation of the U.S. House of Representatives in its attempt to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Clement was one of the lawyers who made the successful argument in front of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta that would strike down the law’s core requirement that individuals carry health insurance or pay a penalty

Official biography: http://www.bancroftpllc.com/professionals/paul-d-clement/

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MICHAEL A. CARVIN

Another former Justice Department official, Carvin’s most famous argument was delivered to the Florida Supreme Court on behalf of soon-to-be President George W. Bush in the Florida recount controversy during the 2000 presidential election. A graduate of George Washington University’s law school in 1982, Carvin has worked as deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which is responsible for legal opinions that are binding on the Executive Branch, deputy assistant attorney general and special assistant to the assistant attorney general in the department’s civil rights division. He will be representing the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which was a party to the lawsuit in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta that struck down the law’s core requirement that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty.

Official biography: http://www.jonesday.com/macarvin

Richard Wolf, USA Today, via the Pensacola News Journal

WASHINGTON — Health coverage for more than 30 million people. The power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. President Obama’s re-election chances. The reputation of the Supreme Court and the legacy of its chief justice.

And to hear some tell it: liberty.

All that and more could be at stake today when the Supreme Court begins a historic three days of oral arguments on the 2010 health care law that has become a symbol of the nation’s deep political divide.

All that and more could be at stake today when the Supreme Court begins a historic three days of oral arguments on the 2010 health care law that has become a symbol of the nation’s deep political divide.

Not since the court confirmed George W. Bush’s election in December 2000 — before 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, Wall Street’s dive and Obama’s rise — has one case carried such sweeping implications for nearly every American.

STAY TUNED!

Medicaid Fingerprinting Requirements

via PBCMS medlink available at www.pbcms.org    

There has been some recent confusion about the new Medicaid requirement for providers to have their fingerprints done. AHCA recently distributed a memo on the requirement which states:

409.907 (8)(a), F.S., requires all initial or renewing provider applicants to Florida Medicaid to submit fingerprints for purposes of obtaining a criminal history record check unless they meet one of the exemptions as described in the statute.

All physicians do NOT need to go out and get their fingerprints done immediately. The ONLY physicians this applies to are those who are initially applying as a Medicaid provider or renewing their provider application. At that time, a provider will be required to submit his or her fingerprints with the application.


Elephants in the Room

ACOs and other new acronyms have swamped the minds of physicians and healthcarebusiness people alike since the terms were coined. The still new healthcare reform law continues to worry many and challenge others to figure out ways to play the game and win. While we scurry around chasing the regs and the new words and government agencies, while politics keeps moving the ball and shaping the healthcare agenda, the most central issues in healthcare cost/quality debate are not even discussed. It’s as though policy makers and business is saying “Hey, if we keep throwing new regulations at them, maybe they’ll stop asking really tough questions we can’t answer.”

Back in the 80s, the state of Oregon enacted Medicaid reform that took the breath right out of the rest of the country. Remember? The idea that a state would not list ALL medical services to ALL Medicaid patients was considered to be cruel and impolitic at the time. And the national debate about (1) whether healthcare is a right of American citizens, and if so (2) what healthcare services are “in” and which are “out” has grown virtually silent.

Instead, it seems we have entered the area of political intransigence. It appears that getting and staying in political office requires as little change as possible. So, very little seems to be accomplished or even discussed.

So what are the “elephants in the room?” They are the issues of “how much” and “patient accountability.” Though it appears that the issue of whether we Americans are entitled to receive healthcare has been skirted, we are clearly missing any discussion on the issue of how much services. Oregon hit the issue head on, but nationally there appears to be no movement or even discussion of the issue. We don’t know who should get what. We just know we want to reduce the costs (ration).

Virtually every effort to reduce costs so far has involved the use of managed care organizations. The Florida Medicaid program pilot project that began in Broward County in 2006 has produced two clear results—reduced expenditures and huge criticism that managed care has reduced costs solely by reducing access and care itself. Managed care has become the “black hat” that politics won’t pick up. It’s ok for managed care to restrict access and care because it reduces costs, but it is politically impossible to directly address the issue of “how much.” We rely on managed care to do it for us, due to our political inability to tackle the issue, then blame the payers for their (wink wink) bad behavior. If managed care is profiting, it is only because they don’t mind profiting from our unwillingness to take responsibility for the issues they deal with on a daily basis—saying “no.”

The second elephant is the issue of patient accountability. There is none! What is the consequence of patient bad behavior? What consequence is there for refusal to exercise, quit smoking, etc.? None. We pay more. There isn’t a single provision in any federal law that punishes us for making expensive healthcare decisions or that rewards us for making cost saving healthcare decisions.

I liken it to having teenagers. Expectations with no consequences yields a predictable result of no change in behavior. Simple.

These are huge issues to tackle. So many different kinds of people, agendas and ways of seeing the issues. So, we don’t even try. Instead, we “hire” managed care to bear the burden of our failure to address and answer these issues. And we throw complex ideas like metrics and healthcare reform into the market, which only serves to distract us from addressing the root causes of our healthcare challenges.


CMS Seeks to Delay E-Reporting Requirement

The CMS has proposed an array of rule changes affecting physicians and their use of health information technology under various Medicare and Medicaid payment regimes, including delaying for at least a year a requirement for the direct, electronic reporting of physician quality data as part of the meaningful use requirements of the electronic health-record incentive payment program under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

“One key change in the rule is a proposal to continue to allow physicians and other eligible professionals (collectively referred to as EPs under the program) to qualify as having met a portion of their meaningful-use requirements for clinical quality measures by submitting attestations to the CMS.”

The 621-page proposed rule, released by the CMS this month, but not scheduled for official publication in the Federal Register until Wednesday, is open for public comment through August 30.

Via Modern Healthcare  7-13-2011