Washington roundup: OIG says 'aye' to contract billing on Medicare imaging.

Washington roundup: OIG says 'aye' to contract billing on Medicare imaging

By MARK McCARTY

Medical Device Daily Washington Editor

The impact of anti-kickback laws on various business arrangements has been tremendous, and business operators consequently take little for granted when it comes to doing business with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

This was the case with a recent decision memo published by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services, which gave a thumbs-up to a rather innocuous-sounding proposal.

According to the Sept. 19 decision memo, which was not published until a week later, OIG was responding to a query "regarding a proposed arrangement under which your newly formed legal entity would provide purely administrative insurance pre-authorization processing and submission services for various radiology and imaging centers." The memo states that the proposed arrangement "would not generate prohibited remuneration under the anti-kickback statute."

The company that filed the request, which was not named in the document, "would form and wholly own and manage" a new entity that would contract with imaging centers across the U.S. to "provide purely administrative services consisting solely of the processing and submission of insurance pre-authorizations for certain radiology and imaging procedures."