Nearly All Physicians Must Revalidate Medicare Enrollment by 2013

Roughly 750,000 physicians in the Medicare program soon will be asked to revalidate their individual enrollment records during a massive anti-fraud effort required by the health system reform law. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services hopes to weed out only the people who shouldn't have billing privileges, but physicians are concerned that legitimate health professionals could get caught up in the enrollment sweep by mistake. CMS gradually will send revalidation requests by mail to more than 1.4 million health professionals -- more than half of whom are doctors -- between now and March 23, 2013, the agency announced on Aug. 10. Physicians who have enrolled since March 25, 2011, will not be required to revalidate, because their applications were scrutinized under new screening criteria, CMS said. Read the full story.