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CMS should work with Congress to extend the moratorium on government audits that could have threatened the financial viability of family medicine residency programs nationwide. That was the recommendation issued recently by Daniel Levinson, acting HHS inspector general.
Levinson made his recommendation Dec. 8 in a memo to CMS Administrator Mark McClellan. M.D., Ph.D.
McClellan has 60 days to submit CMS' final management decision, including an action plan. That plan could follow any of five IG recommendations, which range from refining and continuing present regulations to making direct Medicare payments to nonhospital preceptors.
An extended moratorium would continue to prevent Medicare intermediaries from retroactively disallowing Medicare medical education payment for residents' time in ambulatory settings with volunteer preceptors.
"The AAFP is grateful for the IG's conclusions," said AAFP President Mary Frank, M.D., of Mill Valley, Calif. Medicare intermediaries' audits and retroactive repayment requests "put many family medicine residencies at financial risk," she said.
FP Report is published by the
AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2005 by
American Academy of Family Physicians.
