Doctors: Proposal on Medicare overpayments would impose burden

A proposed rule aimed at reducing Medicare overpayments to doctors is onerous and needs another look, medical groups are telling federal regulators.

Revisions are needed to "significantly reduce administrative burdens for physicians" under the rule, said Dr. Steven Stack, chairman-elect of the American Medical Association (AMA), in a statement Monday.

The rule comes as part of the implementation of the 2010 healthcare law, and would require doctors who receive Medicare overpayments to report and return them within 60 days.

Stack stated that similar initiatives at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services "are already in place, and conflicting requirements will make it difficult for physicians to know which guidelines to follow."

His message comes two weeks after the AMA and more 100 other groups sent a letter to the Medicare agency pushing back against the rule. 

The groups highlighted one provision, which would require practices to keep up to 10 years of medical records in order to investigate instances of excess pay.

"We are adamantly opposed to the proposed 10-year look back period," the letter stated, calling the accompanying searches a "daunting task for a few year period, and an insurmountable burden for a 10-year period."

The groups went on to propose shortening the requirement three years.

This revision would make the program "consistent with other initiatives," Stack said Monday.

Another part of the rule, the groups wrote, suggests that "a physician has a perpetual duty to 'research' whether any overpayment may exist. This requirement would be extremely burdensome for physicians," the letter stated, "as it would impose a boundless duty to troll medical records in search of innumerable vulnerabilities."

The rule was published in February. Regulators invited comments by April 16.