When Medicare Says You Can’t Sit With Us

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued new regulations on its power to exclude healthcare providers and suppliers from participation in a federal healthcare program. The agency excludes some 3,500 people or entities per year. You’ll want to avoid being one of them.

Here are some important takeaways.

The agency is empowered to cast a wider net. It may exclude not just the providers and suppliers who submit claims or receive payments but any person or entity that furnishes items or services for which others request or receive payment.

You can be excluded if you’re convicted of interfering with an audit. The agency doesn’t define the term “audit” for this purpose. Before, you had to have obstructed a criminal investigation, not just an audit or the like. The new rule also makes changes to the factors that extend or reduce the presumptive three-year exclusion under this provision.

You can be excluded for not providing information to support a claim even if you didn’t furnish the items or services in question. You can be excluded if you referred the items or services to others to furnish or certified that they were needed.

The agency has ten years to exclude you for false claims or illegal kickbacks. This timeframe follows the outer ten-year statute of limitations for violations of the False Claims Act. Before, there was theoretically no limit on how far back the agency could look to exclude you under these provisions.

The rule makes several changes to the aggravating and mitigating factors that extend or reduce the length of exclusions. Most of these changes affect the dollar-loss thresholds. For example, it’s now aggravating if the government’s loss amounts to $50,000 or more, when it used to be $15,000. And it’s mitigating if the loss is less than $5,000 when it used to be $1,500. Or, for excessive or unnecessary billing, it’s aggravating if the loss is $15,000 or more when that threshold used to be $1,500. Also, in most cases, it’s no longer mitigating if you provide access to care that’s otherwise not available in your area. Instead, the agency will consider that in deciding whether to exclude you rather than for how long.

You may be eligible for early reinstatement. You can request it if you were excluded because your professional license was revoked, suspended, or surrendered in a disciplinary investigation. There’s a presumption against it for the first three years that you’re excluded or for the length of your suspension or revocation, whichever is longer. There’s no such presumption if you’re still licensed in a different state or by a different licensing authority or if you were able to get a new license after full disclosure. But you’re not eligible at all if you lost your license because of patient abuse or neglect.