CMS plans swift action on Medicare pay

Physicians will not need to resubmit Medicare claims after Congress approves the rate freeze in late January or early February.

By David Glendinning, AMNews staff. Jan. 23, 2006.

Washington -- While physicians wait for lawmakers to wrap up their unfinished business of erasing this year's Medicare pay cut, federal officials say the program is poised to carry out the change.

One of the House's first tasks when it returns to Washington Jan. 31 will be consideration of the Senate-passed Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Once approved by the House and signed by President Bush, as expected, the legislation will halt the 4.4% Medicare reimbursement cut that kicked in at the beginning of the year and will restore physician payments to 2005 levels.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services intends to act quickly to implement this anticipated rate change, wrote Herb Kuhn, director of the agency's Center for Medicare Management, in a recent letter to lawmakers. Carriers will be instructed to begin paying claims at the revised levels within two days of the measure's enactment.

Because the legislation as written makes the reimbursement freeze effective Jan. 1, carriers also will receive instructions to reprocess all of the claims that were submitted during the time that the rate cut was in effect, Kuhn stated. Doctors will not need to go to the trouble of resubmitting all of their January claims to receive the proper reimbursement.