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The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) plans to change Medicare'spayment policy starting March 1, 1996. The cost of laboratory tests will not be reimbursed unless proved to be medically necessary. The new policy also will not cover routine screening and follow-up test expenditures. HCFA provided Medicare carriers with a list of 22 automated profile tests whose cost will be reimbursed at a panel rate., WASHINGTON - In a long-awaited change to Medicare payment policy, the government will no longer pay for all laboratory tests in an automated profile if at least one is deemed [...]

The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services issued a special fraud alert defining several common healthcare practices as fraud. For example, medical laboratories sometimes provide free testing for physicians and their families, but this now considered to be fraudulent because the labs are encouraging the physicians to refer patients. Other fraudulent practices include using lab employees to perform routine duties at a physician's office other than delivering and collecting lab samples., Many doctors view free services that clinical laboratories provide to them or their families as a form of professional courtesy. Federal officials have another name for it -- illegal kickback. [...]

The AMA House of Delegates addresses ways physicians can provide good patient care under the current system -- while working to improve it. Chicago WHILE NO ONE ISSUE DOMINATED DISCUSsion, [...]

Lab assignment requirement for doctors may have loophole Must physicians who don't participate in Medicare accept assignment for all clinical laboratory services provided in their offices? The federal government says [...]