Medicare Ban on Non-emergency Ambulance and Home Health Care Agencies Continues

August 12, 2016

Friday the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services extended a temporary ban on nonemergency ambulance and home health care agencies throughout six states, including Florida, as a continued effort to fight fraud.

In continuing the ban on nonemergency ambulance services, the ban on new emergency ambulance services was lifted. The ban, originally only implemented in Miami, Chicago and Houston, was expanded in January of 2014 to combat fraud in other metropolitan areas seen as fraud hotbeds, specifically in Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The ban has been expanded for additional six months after being in place for three years so far.

According to CMS, Texas, Florida and Illinois are in the lower third for number of patients per home health care provider. Despite this statistic, these three states have the highest number of home health care providers according to CMS data.

Shantanu Agrawal, CMS’ deputy administrator for program integrity commented on the program:

CMS is continuing its efforts to tackle fraud, waste, abuse and protect benefits and services for those eligible for federal health care programs. . . CMS is also increasing its oversight efforts through the use of heightened screening and investigative tools for new providers in the moratoria areas.

According to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, as much as $60 billion is lost due to fraud, waste and abuse of the federal health care programs.

Click here for full story.