In order to increase cash flow to providers of services impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, CMS has expanded the Accelerated and Advance Payments Program for the duration of the public health emergency. This program is available now, and could result in payment within 7 days.

We’ve compiled a quick summary of the details:

• Medicare’s accelerated and advance payments program makes it possible for you apply for and receive up to 3 months of future reimbursements
• The application process is through your Medicare contractor and intended to be straightforward
• This money must be paid back to CMS
• Payback begins 120 days after the funds are disbursed to you
• Payback is achieved through reduction of future claims for reimbursement for services rendered. Thus, you’d expect to not be paid by Medicare in the future until your advanced payment balance has been eliminated
• You would likely have 210 days to complete the payback process. This is not to say that you can decide on the amount to pay back at a given interval. Instead, this is CMS saying that if the balance isn’t paid back within 210 days, an alternate process will be used for the rest (i.e. they’d request a check)

Here is a link to the CMS fact sheet with additional information.

Read our helpful guide for instructions on how to process insurance prepayments for payments made within and outside of RevolutionEHR.

RevolutionEHR provides this information with the understanding that authors or speakers are not experts in finance, regulatory policy or law. RevolutionEHR shares this information to the best of our knowledge and experience. The information is subject to change as the COVID-19 crisis evolves.