Feds Delay Office-Based Lab Financial Reporting

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has pushed back to May 30 the deadline for physician office-based laboratories to meet new financial reporting requirements.

The original deadline of March 31 had been put in place last year as part of the Protecting Access to Medicare Act, which required that Medicare payments for tests on the Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS) be based on rates paid by private payers. The new CLFS rate system, which will be determined by the reports from applicable laboratories, is slated to take effect Jan. 1, 2018.

The "enforcement discretion," as announced by CMS on March 30, was requested by seven medical associations, including the American Medical Association.

"Industry feedback suggests that many reporting entities will not be able to submit a complete set of applicable information to CMS by the March 31, 2017, deadline, and that such entities require additional time to review collected data, address any issues identified during such review, and compile the data into CMS's required reporting format," CMS said in a statement. "This 60-day enforcement discretion period is the maximum amount of time CMS can permit to still have sufficient time to calculate the CLFS payment rates scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2018."

Under the rule, the penalty for failure to report or for each misrepresentation or omission in reporting will be up to $10,000 per day, adjusted for inflation. 

For more information, visit the CMS website

Action, April 17, 2017

Last Updated On

April 17, 2017

Originally Published On

April 07, 2017

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