What is allowable Medicare bad debt?
The Medicare patient account may be claimed as a bad debt only, when it meets certain criteria. They are: • The debt should be related to Medicare covered services. • The provider has to produce sufficient evidence of reasonable collection efforts. • The debt was uncollectible when it was claimed for its worthlessness. • There is no chance of recovery of the debt in the future. There are so many instances of court and administrative decisions, when Medicare reimbursement has been disallowed. If the Medicare patient account remains at an outside collection agency, it can not be claimed as a bad debt. Because it is considered that if the patient account remains at a collection agency, it is actually not uncollectible. So Medicare bad debt will be disallowed if the provider writes off the patient account and claim for a bad debt while the patient account still remains at a collection agency unless the provider meets the certain criteria for the moratorium on bad debt disallowances. Delay
