Provider Relief Fund Payment Reports Past-Due – Consequences Already Being Enforced

Health care providers who received Provider Relief Fund payments exceeding $10,000 total between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2020, should have reported to the Health Resources and Services Administration by March 31 on how they used those funds. The following is an article by Bloomberg Law about providers that are already facing enforcement actions such as repayment or exclusion from receiving or retaining future PRF payments due to not having reported on the use of funds. 

Doctors Asked to Repay $100 Million in Covid Aid Absent Reports                                   

Bloomberg Law

The Department of Health and Human Services is clawing back as much as $100 million in pandemic assistance from health-care providers who didn’t comply with the agency’s reporting requirements.

Physician practices and clinics that received notices from HHS say they didn’t know there were strings attached to the money. Initial tranches of Covid-19 funds were deposited in some providers’ accounts without them asking for it.

Reminder emails about reporting requirements went to some facilities’ spam folders or to staffers who initially accepted the money but ended up leaving their jobs, according to the Medical Group Management Association, which represents health-care practices and providers.

The HHS’s Health Resources and Services Administration sent notices to non-compliant facilities on March 10, giving them 30 days to return the funds.

“If you do not return the funds, HRSA will initiate the recovery of all funds not reported on” during the first reporting period. Those providers will also be excluded from future payments, HRSA said, according to a sample letter obtained by Bloomberg Law. HRSA confirmed that the letters went out.

Roughly 10,000 recipients of the Provider Relief Fund are being asked to return anywhere from $30,000 to $250,000 by April 10, said Claire Ernst, MGMA’s director of government affairs. Meanwhile, they’re dealing with “everything from the highest inflation that we have seen in 40 years and potential variants down the line,” Ernst said.

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