Providers and suppliers feeling the weight of Hurricane Helene and its aftermath will see accelerated and advance Medicare payments alongside other assistances and flexibilities, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Wednesday.
Specifically, the agency said those in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disaster zones may request the payments on an individual basis. Enrolled Part A providers and Part B supplies must have billed the program for claims in the 90 days prior to the disaster’s aftermath and be in good standing.
Approved accelerated and advance payments would be granted in amounts equal to a portion of the preceding 90 days of claims payments, CMS said, and will be automatically recouped across the 90 days following their issuance.
Additionally, CMS said some providers and suppliers repaying debt under an Extended Repayment Schedule may restructure or extend their payments. Because postal debt communications may also have been disrupted during the emergency, CMS is also allowing providers and supplies to request letters be rescinded and reissued “at a time when the availability of mail service has been reestablished.
In the announcement, CMS said it wanted to head off “significant cash flow issues from the unusual circumstances impacting facilities’ operations.” The advances and flexibilities are possible due to President Joe Biden’s disaster declarations and the Department of Health and Human Services’ public health emergency declarations.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s panhandle region as a category 4 storm Sept. 26 and then swept north with winds and flooding. Nearly 200 people are confirmed to have been killed due to the storm and its lingering effects, which have left large swaths of Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee with damaged infrastructure and power outages.
Hospitals and other providers in Helene’s path prepared for the storm with patient transfers, backup generators, staffing contingencies and storm walls. Subsequent days have largely seen hospitals reopen and play a leading role in local recovery efforts, per news reports, though an emergency rescue of dozens of patients and workers stranded on the roof of Ballad Health’s Unicoi County Hospital in eastern Tennessee has now become emblematic of the storm’s destruction.