Medicare Announces Charging for Enrollment

Medicare will begin charging charges for many enrollment applications

Wow, I am unsure why this surprised me a lot however when I saw this email I had been surprised. Medicare will start charging providers who submit enrollment applications? Well it isn’t all providers, but nonetheless it will affect many. However the CMS (Centers for Medicare and State medicaid programs Services) announced that effective Friday, March 25, 2011 Medicare Administrative Contractors will start collecting application charges for several provider/supplier enrollment applications. To both paper an internet-based, or PECOS, applications.

Just how much will this application fee be? That’s the first question I’d. But the reply is not obvious. It seems that they’re charging $500 for brand new enrollments in 2010 consider it had not been effective until March of 2011 I had been created a little perplexed. Anyway, it appears as though the cost of 2011 is $512 for brand new enrollments and $200 for revalidations and/or adding practice locations.

Also, the charge isn’t relevant to any or all providers. The charges don’t affect physicians, non-physician practitioners, physician organizations, and non-physician organizations. It is just relevant for institutional providers of medical or any other products or services or suppliers. It’s relevant for that CMS-855A, CMS-855B (excluding physician and non-physician specialist organizations), and CMS-855S applications.

Personally, I believe this will cause some major confusion. As though it had not been with enough contentration for providers to simply evaluate which forms have to be posted, now they have to determine whether they have to pay. Also, a few of the MAC’s (Medicare Administrative Contractors) happen to be difficult to cope with. (Only for the record, many are very enjoyable and useful.) Description of how the have one other way that they’ll return apps proclaiming that the charge wasn’t incorporated, even when free was needed. As everyone knows, Medicare as being a government agency is filled with bureaucracy. When the provider constitutes a mistake they need to repair it, however, if the MAC constitutes a mistake, the company continues to have to repair it.

And That I think it is very ironic that Medicare has become requiring all providers to simply accept payments through EFT (electronic funds transfer) but they’re requiring payment of these apps by paper check. They haven’t created a mechanism yet for getting money digitally. Obviously they’re going to have exceptions according to difficulty but individuals is decided on the situation by situation basis in the discretion from the MAC. I believe consistency will matter there. There’s a printed document however it would be a little hard to go through all 110 pages.

I am often a “glass is half full” person so that as I just read back through i feel I am being quite negative. However, after doing a large number of Medicare applications in the last many years, I’ve come across many problems within the application. In my experience, this inclusion of a charge is simply likely to complicate things much more. I will be watching to determine the way it plays out!