PARA Weekly eJournal: October 13, 2021
PAMA REPORTING CLARIFIED FOR "NON-PATIENT SPECIMEN" CLAIMS
PARA r eceived clar if icat ion on w h et h er h ospit als m u st r epor t paym en t r at es an d volu m es f or lab t est s t h at w er e per f or m ed on a n on -pat ien t basis, bu t billed on a 13X or 85X Type of Bill. For the first time, Medicare will require certain hospitals which meet the definition of an ?Applicable Laboratory? to report payments made by commercial insurers for non-patient laboratory services.The reports are due in the first quarter of 2022. The central qualifying criteria for hospitals is whether the entity was paid more than $12,500 by Medicare in the period January 1 through June 30, 2019.The data that must be reported are allowable payment rates made by commercial payers per lab CPT® code, and the frequency of times each hospital has been paid each separate rate. The rates of commercial payments to be reported are limited to those paid for ?non-patient services?, which should be reported on the 14X Type of Bill (TOB.) However, several hospitals have asked PARA whether payments made for non-patient services, but which were billed on another TOB (such as 13X or 85X), should be reported. We turned to Medicare?s Clinical Fee Schedule Inquiries email address (CLFS_Inquiries@cms.hhs.gov) for clarification on this point. 39