Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Expand Its Accelerated and Advance Payment Program
March 31, 2020
By John Marren and Tom Babbo.
Providing urgently-needed financial relief for doctors, hospitals, and other health care facilities and professionals, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on March 31st an expansion of its accelerated and advance payment program. Under this program, which includes changes made under the CARES Act signed into law on March 29, 2020, all Medicare providers and suppliers can qualify for accelerated and advance payment if they:
- billed Medicare for claims within 180 days immediately prior to filing an Accelerated/Advance Payment Request form (these forms are available from the applicable Medicare Administrative Contractor for your region),
- are not in bankruptcy,
- are not under active medical review or program integrity investigation, and
- do not have any outstanding delinquent Medicare overpayments.
Most qualified doctors and other health care facilities and professionals will be able to request up to 100% of their Medicare payment amounts for a three month period. The majority of inpatient acute care hospitals and children’s hospitals can request up to 100% of Medicare payments for a six-month period, while critical access hospitals (CAHs) can request up to 125%.
Although these advance Medicare payments will need to be repaid, such repayment will not begin until 120 days after the date payment was issued, and CMS will not expect repayment in full for up to a year from most acute care hospitals and within 210 days from doctors and other covered health care professionals and outpatient facilities.
CMS has said that it will immediately begin accepting and processing Accelerated/Advance Payment Requests, and anticipates issuing payments within 7 days of application.
More information is available at the following link: www.cms.gov/files/document/Accelerated-and-Advanced-Payments-Fact-Sheet.pdf.
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