Advocacy & Practice Updates — Advocacy & Practice

Breaking: HHS Today Begins Immediate Delivery of Initial $30 Billion of Cares Act Provider Relief Funding

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it will begin delivering today the initial $30 billion in relief funding to health care providers as part of the $100 billion provider relief fund in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.ASRS is hearing that some members have already received payment.

These are payments, not loans, and will not need to be repaid, but must be used to support healthcare-related expenses or lost revenue attributable to coronavirus, such as reducing or ceasing practice, and to ensure patients get the testing and treatment they need without receiving a surprise bill: as a condition, providers are obligated to abstain from "balance billing" any patient for COVID-related treatment.

All health care providers enrolled in Medicare will automatically receive a payment based on 2019 Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) reimbursements, distributed at the TIN level.

You can estimate your payment by calculating your share of Medicare billing and multiplying by $30 billion. As an example, if your practice had $2 million in FFS billing in 2019 your estimated payment is as follows:

($2,000,000/$484,000,000,000) x $30,000,000,000 = $124,000.

UnitedHealth Group (UHG) will deliver it via direct deposit account information on file or used for reimbursements from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) (payments will come via Optum Bank with "HHSPAYMENT" as the description). If you normally receive a paper check for reimbursement from CMS you will receive a check in the mail within the next few weeks.

Within 30 days of receiving the payment, you must sign an attestation confirming receipt and agreeing to terms and conditions of payment, which can be read here. If a you do not wish to comply with the terms and conditions, you may contact HHS within 30 days of receipt of payment and remit the full payment to HHS as instructed (see HHS release). A portal for signing the attestation will be open next week and will be linked from the HHS webpage below.

ASRS will provide more information on terms and conditions and attestation as we receive it.

For more information: https://www.hhs.gov/provider-relief/index.html

(Published 4.10.20)