Doctors: Proposal on Medicare overpayments would impose burden

The groups highlighted one provision, which would require practices to keep up to 10 years of medical records in order to investigate instances of excess pay.

“We are adamantly opposed to the proposed 10-year look back period,” the letter stated, calling the accompanying searches a “daunting task for a few year period, and an insurmountable burden for a 10-year period.”

The groups went on to propose shortening the requirement three years.

This revision would make the program “consistent with other initiatives,” Stack said Monday.

Another part of the rule, the groups wrote, suggests that “a physician has a perpetual duty to ‘research’ whether any overpayment may exist. This requirement would be extremely burdensome for physicians,” the letter stated, “as it would impose a boundless duty to troll medical records in search of innumerable vulnerabilities.”

The rule was published in February. Regulators invited comments by April 16.