The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced that it intends to speed up its collections practices enforcing the Medicare Secondary Payer Act (MSP). CMS stated that such procedures are mandatory under the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 or the DATA Act Public Law No: 113-101 (05/09/2014).
The purpose of the legislation is to increase transparency on how money is spent by the Federal government and have the information available in an “open and machine readable” format. The centralized information will be placed online.
As CMS struggles to meet its budget, the DATA Act is being utilized to coordinate and collect conditional payments to injured workers made under the MSP Act. Additionally, the information about delinquent payments may ultimately become posted on the Internet.
Today CMS announced:
“On May 9, 2014, the President signed into law the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act). One outcome of this legislation will be to reduce the timeframe for the referral of delinquent debt to the Department of Treasury (“Treasury”) for both Non Group Health Plan (including self-insurance, liability, no-fault, and workers’ compensation) and Group Health Plan from 180 to 120 days after the payment is due. This change will be effective October 1, 2015.
“Debtors will continue to be notified of the intent to refer the debt to Treasury’s Offset Program for further collection activities, if the debt is not paid within 60 days.
