In a 11/26/2019 Alert, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the 2020 recovery threshold for liability, no-fault and workers’ compensation settlements will remain at $750. Accordingly, Total Payment Obligations to the Claimant, TPOCs, in the amount of $750 or less are not required to be reported to CMS through the Section 111 Mandatory Reporting process, nor will CMS attempt to recover conditional payments for TPOCs of this amount (The threshold does not apply to liability settlements for alleged ingestion, implantation or exposure cases).

By way of background, pursuant to the SMART Act of 2012, CMS is required to annually determine a threshold amount such that the cost of collection does not outstrip the amount recovered through such collection efforts. CMS’s calculations, which can be found here, resulted in the $750 threshold being maintained.

Practical Implications

As CMS is keeping the $750 threshold for mandatory reporting and conditional payment recovery there are no changes to the reporting processes or determinations as to when conditional payments should be investigated or resolved.