| Abstract: | Existing Medicare regulations require a hospital to obtain, on an annual basis, from each attending physician, a signed acknowledgement that the physician understands the penalty for misrepresenting the information on an attestation statement relating to principal and secondary diagnoses and major procedures performed on patients. This final rule with comment period eliminates the requirement for an annual acknowledgement statement and instead requires that a physician sign an acknowledgement statement only upon being granted admitting privileges at a hospital. The purpose of this change is to reduce the paperwork burden associated with processing claims under Medicare. |
