Florida Lawmakers Urge Secretary Price, CMS to Reject Pre-Claim Review

This week, a bipartisan group of Florida lawmakers sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, MD urging him to reject the Medicare Home Health Pre-Claim Review Demonstration and replace it with a more effective program to tackle Medicaid fraud.

The letter, which was signed by twenty-seven members of Florida’s Congressional delegation, including Senators Bill Nelson (D) and Marco Rubio (R), called on CMS to put the breaks on PCRD ahead of its scheduled implementation date on April 1^st. The program was first rolled out in Illinois last August and resulted in numerous technical issues and improper care denials across the state. Because of these issues, CMS initially delayed PCRD from taking effect in Florida and several other states for many months in order for it to be improved. However, it is clear that no serious effort was made to fix the underlying problems with PCRD during that time.

“We support efforts to combat Medicare fraud and protect taxpayer funds, but we are concerned that the PCRD’s current parameters are too broad to reduce fraud and improper payment rates,” the letter reads. “We encourage you to consider an alternative approach that would achieve these goals and ease the administrative burden and additional implementation costs for smaller home health agencies, and ensure timely patient access to services.”

The letter also raises the concern that Pre-Claim Review imposes onerous restricts on small home health providers, and was implemented without going through the formal rulemaking process.

You can read the full letter here.