The waiting time for appeals over Medicare coverage has been cut in half, Kaiser Health News reports: "The Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA) has decided most of the 5,162 cases filed by beneficiaries in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, plus 1,535 older cases, according to statistics provided to Kaiser Health News. That’s a dramatic change from the year before, when a third of beneficiary cases (1,493) were not decided and nearly half (1,705) of the 2012 cases also were unresolved."
The office is still a long way from meeting the federal requirement that an appeal be decided within 90 days after a request for a hearing.
The progress in addressing the Medicare-coverage backlog has been at the expense of appeals filed by healthcare providers like hospitals, nursing homes and medical-device suppliers. There are 900,000 appeals from healthcare providers, and the wait times for their appeals have doubled because appeals from beneficiaries have been prioritized.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
