HCFA could decide to drop outpatient bundling rules
HCFA could decide to drop outpatient bundling rules
Outpatient providers may soon breathe easier. Medicare officials probably will not issue a long-awaited final rule on the required bundling of outpatient services, according to the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA).
After threatening for more than a decade to issue a regulation barring hospitals and outpatient facilities from unbundled Medicare billing, HCFA now says it may not pursue the matter any longer.
The reason given was the likely passage of an outpatient prospective payment system under consideration by Congress.
However, until then, Medicare’s Provider Reimbursement Manual (Section 2830.2) still will prohibit providers from unbundling charges.
The manual requires the bundling to be done by the facility where the services were originally ordered. But patients have made enforcement difficult because they have been free to obtain services wherever they please.
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