Since October 2015, the recovery of Medicare health care payments from both Group (GHP) and Non-Group Health Providers (NGHP) has been managed by CGI Federal. CGI is the first contractor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Commercial Repayment Center (CRC), which collects back from third-party entities provisional payments made by Medicare on behalf of its injured members. However, on February 9th, 2018, management of those recovery services transitions to Performant Financial Group. Entities currently involved in GHP and NGHP/Medicare member cases may want to rethink their MSA opportunities as the new contractor takes up the Medicare "recovery of funds" challenge.
The purpose of the CRC is to identify and recover primary health care payments made on behalf of injured Medicare members when another entity carries the legal responsibility for those fees. Until 2015, CMS's Benefits Coordination & Recovery Center (BCRC) was responsible for tracking down and collecting these funds. That process became unwieldy, however, because that agency was tasked with collecting from not just third-party entities, but also from the beneficiaries themselves. Wisely, CMS elected to bifurcate the burden and transitioned off the third-party collections responsibility into the newly created CRC.
Since its inception, the CRC has been collecting mistaken payments from both GHP's, the injured member's employer's health care insurance provider, and NGHP's, other entities with the legal responsibility to cover these healthcare costs, including no-fault insurers, liability insurers, and entities that are self-insured.
For many companies, the collection notice came as an unwelcome surprise. Many no-fault and liability cases had been open for years, sometimes decades, and the CRC was now demanding a refund of all Medicare provisional payments made in those cases. Companies scrambled to review their files for Medicare members and to set up systems to identify, respond to, and proactively work to resolve any and all affected open cases. Some companies had to reimburse thousands of dollars to the agency for claims paid years earlier.
For worker's compensation cases, the number of repayment notices was significantly less than those issued in other Medicare-related cases. Since 2001, CMS has been a party to injury cases involving injured members and Worker's Compensation carriers. For both pre- and post-settlement purposes, legal representatives of the insureds and the insurers must consider Medicare's interest regarding future healthcare payments and include a Medicare Set Aside (MSA) agreement in the settlement when future health care coverage is required. Consequently, worker’s compensation entities managing healthcare services through MSA's had no backlog of unreimbursed Medicare payments because they had budgeted for those costs as the case closed. In these cases, the services of the BCRC (and now the CRC) are unnecessary; Medicare's interest had been resolved before the case fully resolved.
The incoming CRC agent offers a heads-up opportunity for any entity dealing with Medicare members in any sort of injury case, regardless of whether it is based on a liability, no-fault, or self-insured claim. In 2017, CMS announced new set-aside procedures for NGHP's (Liability Insurance injury claims and No-Fault injury claims) that recommend establishing an MSA in the originating case. The new procedures may be enforceable as early as July 2018. Although that announcement indicated that the Worker’s Compensation Recovery Center (WCRC) would be reviewing the cases, it may eventually turn out that the new CRC contractor will assume those obligations. No matter who the overseer turns out to be, a best business practice mindset would suggest that entities that may be held accountable for future repayment of relevant Medicare healthcare costs should begin developing their MSA contacts and procedures sooner rather than later.
Certainly, looking at Performant's history and intentions, the new CRC contractor intends to pursue any entity that may owe reimbursement funds to CMS; in its announcement about the new contract, Performant noted its intent to staff the project with more than 250 employees dedicated to the Medicare cause. And the company has significant experience collecting funds for the government; it is also a Private Collection Agent (PCA) for the U.S. Treasury Department and a Recovery Audit Contractor for Regions 1 and 5. While Performant will not be the recovery agent for WC cases (that contract went to Capital Bridge LLC), the anticipated increase in MSA review volume suggests that it may assume some of those obligations in the future.
Two webinars hosted by CMS informed the Medicare healthcare community of the process by which the transition will occur:
Medicare Commercial Repayment Center – NGHP, P.O. Box 269003
Oklahoma City, OK 73216
Fax: (844) 315-7627 (new number)
Phone: (855) 798-2627 (maintained as the current CRC Call Center phone number)
8:00 AM – 8:00 PM ET
The events of 2017 (new LMSA and NFMSA rules and two new contractors) will certainly trigger ancillary changes to MSA and CMS procedures in 2018. At CompExMSA, we will continue to seek out answers to your MSA questions and look forward to assisting both existing and new clients with their MSA practices, processes and needs.
