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AAA
Alert
CMS
freezes Medicare ambulance payments
By
Mark Harrison
KAPA President
According to a bulletin
released by AAA, a representative of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (
CMS
) announced that the agency had informed Medicare carriers and
fiscal intermediaries to immediately freeze until further notice
the payment of all pending ambulance service claims.
CMS
plans to freeze payments until it can provide carriers and fiscal
intermediaries with the correct rates for 2006 under the Medicare
ambulance fee schedule. When
CMS
provided carriers and fiscal intermediaries with the 2006 rates
this past December,
CMS
had applied the inflation update of 2.5% twice and had not reduced
the regional fee schedule percentage for last year’s level of
60% to this year’s level of 40%.
I have
engaged AAA counsel Patton Boggs to prepare an official written
AAA position stating that payments should be restored immediately
which will be delivered first thing tomorrow morning to the
appropriate individuals at
CMS
. We have also already contacted
CMS
officials through informal channels and will continue to pursue
this issue until it corrected. We will keep you posted on new
developments.
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