January 22, 2020 03:17 pm News Staff – Well, this is awkward. CMS says it hasn't been able to pay bonuses owed to some 2,800 physicians because the agency lacks data necessary to complete the transactions.
An unusual advisory from the agency published Dec. 30 in the Federal Register is intended "to alert certain clinicians who are qualifying alternative payment model participants and eligible to receive an advanced APM incentive payment that CMS does not have the current banking information needed to disburse the payment."
"As we identified the QPs who are the subject of this advisory, we made continued efforts, but still have not located current banking information for them."
Linked in that notice is a PDF that, in turn, links to a spreadsheet listing the names and national provider identifier numbers of the unpaid physicians and includes instructions for bringing disbursement information up to date.
The deadline to give CMS updated banking information is Feb. 28.
As part of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, CMS' Quality Payment Program is supposed to deliver a 5% bonus on Part B payments to participating physicians through performance year 2022. The bonuses go out two years after the performance year; 2017's bonuses, the program's first, were due to be disbursed last year.
The payments were slow in coming, however, and last fall, the Academy was among several medical organizations that lobbied CMS to address the delay. Less than two weeks after the groups' joint letter was sent, the agency announced that it had begun processing the bonus payments.
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