Daviess County Hospital v. Otis R. Bowen, M.D., Secretary of Health and Human ServicesDaviess County Hospital v. Otis R. Bowen, M.D., Secretary of Health and Human Services
The Secretary of Health and Human Services appeals from a district court order reversing a decision of the Provider Reimbursement Review Board (“PRRB”) and remanding for calculation of Medicare provider reimbursement to appellee Daviess County Hospital (“the Hospital”). The PRRB concluded that the Hospital had failed to keep adequate records of the physical therapy services it provided and therefore was not entitled to reimbursement for the costs of therapy services rendered to Medicare patients. The district court held that reimbursement was due because, despite deficiencies in the Hospital’s records, it was not disputed that some therapy services were performed for which reasonable compensation could be determined. For the reasons set forth below, we reverse the district court and remand for entry of judgment for the Secretary.
I.
Medicare is a federally funded health insurance program established under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act,
Daviess County Hospital is a 136-bed general short-term hospital located in Washington, Indiana. Since 1971, the Hospital has operated its physical therapy department under an independent contract with American Therapeutic Services, Inc. (“ATS”). Under this contract ATS furnishes physical therapy services to the Hospital’s patients (including those covered by Medicare) in exchange for 55 percent of the gross revenues of the Hospital’s physical therapy department. The principals of ATS, Mario and Beverly Chilman, husband and wife, are licensed physical therapists. In addition to working at the Hospital themselves, the Chilmans employed several part-time aides and assistants and at least one part-time therapist in the department during the period in question.
Like most Medicare providers, the Hospital applies for reimbursement through an intermediary, in this case Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association/Mutual Hospital Insurance, Inc. (“Blue Cross”). During an audit of the Hospital’s 1977 cost report, Blue Cross concluded that the Hospital had failed to maintain records of physical therapy services in accordance with procedures
Because it had found the Hospital’s time records deficient, Blue Cross warned the Hospital during the audit of the 1977 cost report that the Hospital was not in compliance with the record-keeping requirements of the Provider Reimbursement Manual. Acknowledging this warning in a letter to Blue Cross on March 12, 1979, the Hospital’s administrator promised that the Hospital would “begin maintaining a daily log identifying all information required by Section 1417 of [the Manual].”
When Blue Cross audited the Hospital’s 1979 cost report, it discovered that daily logs were not in fact kept for that year. The Hospital made two attempts to supplement its report with additional records, but Blue Cross remained dissatisfied, and ultimately decided to disallow all reimbursement to the Hospital for physical therapy services for 1979. When an audit of the Hospital’s cost report for 1980 resulted in a similar determination, Blue Cross denied all reimbursement for that year as well. A total of $97,959.00 in claimed reimbursement was disallowed. The Hospital appealed Blue Cross’ disallowances to the PRRB under
After the Secretary declined to modify the decision of the PRRB, the Hospital sought review in the district court under
II.
We must dispose of two preliminary matters before proceeding to the merits of the Secretary’s claim. The first concerns this court’s jurisdiction. The order appealed from remanded this case to the PRRB for further proceedings, specifically the calculation of “reasonable reimbursement” for physical therapy services rendered to Medicare patients during the years 1979 and 1980. Ordinarily an order remanding a case to an administrative agency for further proceedings is not a “final decision” subject to immediate appeal under
Both the Secretary and the Hospital agree that we have jurisdiction, although their proffered reasons differ. The Secre
Although we cannot apply the “collateral order” rule directly, the considerations behind the finality requirement still favor finding the district court’s order appealable under
Appeals to district courts from PRRB orders are governed by
The second preliminary matter concerns this court’s standard of review of factual findings made below. The Hospital contends that this court must apply
III.
Although we have devoted some attention to our standard of review of the Secretary’s factual findings, this is not a ease in which factual disputes are of great significance. The Secretary does not claim that no therapy services were performed and does not argue that the costs the Hospital reported are unreasonably large for the therapy services that the Hospital claims to have rendered to Medicare patients. For its own part, the Hospital does not really contend that its records fully satisfied § 1417A of the Provider Reimbursement Manual. The dispute before us centers on the relationship between the Secretary’s record-keeping regulations (and his interpretation of them) and the Medicare statute itself. The Secretary maintains that the record-keeping rules do not exceed statutory boundaries and that complete disallowance of reimbursement is specifically authorized by the Medicare statute under circumstances such as these. The Hospital argues that the Medicare statute requires reimbursement where a provider has shown that reasonable costs are incurred, and that the Secretary has interpreted the record-keeping regulations in a manner contrary to the statute.
The Medicare statute authorizes reimbursement to providers of “the reasonable cost of such services” as are provided to Medicare patients (or of the provider’s “customary charges” for those services, if lower).
The reasonable cost of any services shall be the cost actually incurred, excluding therefrom any part of incurred cost found to be unnecessary in the efficient delivery of needed health services, and shall be determined in accordance with regulations establishing the method or methods to be used, and the items to be included, in determining such costs____
The subsection goes on to afford the Secretary wide latitute in prescribing regulations governing the process of determining reasonable costs. It is further provided in
As part of his responsibility in administering the cost determination process, the Secretary has promulgated regulations governing the submission of annual provider cost reports and the records that must support them. The record-keeping regulations carry out a specific provision of the Medicare statute,
Adequate cost information must be obtained from the provider’s records to support payments made for services rendered to beneficiaries. The requirement of adequacy of data implies that the databe accurate and in sufficient detail to accomplish the purposes for which it is [sic] intended. Adequate data capable of being audited is [sic ] consistent with good business concepts and effective and efficient management of any organization, whether it is operated for profit or on a nonprofit basis. It [sic ] is a reasonable expectation on the part of any agency paying for services on a cost-reimbursement basis.
The most detailed record-keeping and reporting requirements set by the Secretary for therapy services are found in § 1417 of the Provider Reimbursement Manual. In 1979 the Manual addressed provider record-keeping in § 1417A:
Data to be Maintained by Provider. Providers must maintain sufficient data in its [sic ] records to support the statements submitted with its [sic ] cost report, and the data must be reflected in a manner so as to provide an adequate audit trail. These records, whether in the form of a daily log or similar daily records, must be kept up to date and be available at all times for review by the intermediary____
(Emphasis added). Section 1417A listed seven specific types of data required for each therapy service claim, including the date, the name of the therapists) involved, the therapeutic procedure followed, the provider’s charge for the service and the hours of service rendered. 3 These records were to be kept for all patients, whether covered by Medicare or not. Section 1417B discusses the information that must be submitted in cost reports.
IV.
Throughout these proceedings the only aspect of the Hospital’s record-keeping that has been consistently challenged by Blue Cross (and by the Secretary) has been the recording of time worked on each patient by ATS therapists. Blue Cross concluded that inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the therapy department’s time records demonstrated that they were not the fruits of a contemporaneous time log kept on a daily basis and that they could not be verified by audit. To the extent that the Hospital challenges the PRRB’s finding to that effect, we find it amply supported by the record.
Blue Cross initially became suspicious of the Hospital’s therapy time records when it noted that there was little correlation between the number of hours the therapists worked and the number of patients they treated, and that the number of hours certain therapists worked on particular days of the week never varied over the entire year. Further examination revealed that Mario Chilman claimed to have worked on all 365 days of 1979, and that both he and his wife worked their normal hours on all holidays. 4 After records were initially corrected, Mario Chilman still claimed to have worked six hours on “November 31, 1979”, a day that does not exist. The Hospital’s first “corrected” submission no longer claimed any holiday hours.
The Hospital’s real dispute with the Secretary, however, does not concern its compliance (or lack thereof) with the daily record-keeping requirements, but rather goes to the validity of those requirements, and especially of § 1417A of the Manual. The Hospital contends that a complete denial of reimbursement based on the Secretary’s “strict” adherence to the daily log requirement violates the statutory mandate that Medicare providers be reimbursed for such “reasonable costs” as they incur in treating covered patients. The Hospital insists that it demonstrated before the PRRB by means of secondary evidence that the costs it claimed were “reasonable” for the treatments provided, and that the paramount statutory principle of reasonable cost reimbursement therefore requires payment.
The Hospital’s attack is primarily directed at § 1417A of the Provider Reimbursement Manual, which assertedly violates the Medicare statute’s reasonable cost rule by barring viable methods of proving costs other than the use of contemporaneous daily records. The Manual is not itself a regulation; it is published by the Health Care Financing Administration to instruct providers in the application of reimbursement regulations. As the Administration is an arm of the Secretary, the Manual is best viewed as an administrative interpretation of regulations and corresponding statutes, and as such it is entitled to “considerable deference” as a general matter.
See Bedford Medical Center v. Heckler,
The Hospital seems to suggest that the reasonable cost requirement is a ceiling: any figure below a reasonable amount for the work done should be allowed. The
To argue, as the Hospital does, that the Secretary should pay any claim less than or equal to an estimated “reasonable” figure is to ignore, rather than to advance, the purpose of the Medicare statute’s reasonable cost requirement. The statute itself defines reasonable cost as “the cost
actually incurred,
excluding therefrom any part of incurred cost found to be unnecessary....”
In order to fulfill his Congressional mandate to make accurate determinations of the actual costs of Medicare-covered services, the Secretary specified in § 1417A of the Manual certain categories of information that providers had to furnish in their cost reports. That § 1417A requires these records to be kept in the form of a “daily log” or its equivalent is entirely in accord with the Medicare statute's actual cost requirement and with Congress’ insistence on accurate determinations of actual cost. Time records kept contemporaneously with the hours worked are more likely to be accurate than those assembled from memory at a later time or pieced together from records kept for other purposes. Accordingly, we find the contemporaneous record requirement set forth in § 1417A of the Manual to be consistent with the Medicare statute and its attendant regulations.
The consequence of failure to provide auditable records is also specifically provided for in the Medicare statute at
The Hospital finally argues that disallowance of reimbursement contravenes the Medicare statute’s prohibition of shifting costs from Medicare to non-Medicare patients, or
vice versa. See
The Hospital’s application of
St. John’s Hickey
and the anti-cost-shifting provisions of
V.
The decision of the Secretary disallowing Medicare reimbursement to the Hospital for physical therapy costs claimed for 1979 and 1980 was neither arbitrary nor capricious and was not contrary to the language or purpose of the Medicare statute. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is REVERSED.
Notes
. The dissenting member of the PRRB panel, while agreeing with the majority that the Hospital’s records were inadequate, felt that some reimbursement is required where costs are undisputably incurred "no matter how inadequate the timekeeping records may be.” Provider Reimbursement Review Board Hearing Decision, July 22, 1983, at p. 9 (dissenting opinion of Board Member Dudgeon).
. In
St. Mary's Hospital Medical Center v. Heckler,
. The Provider Reimbursement Manual is also known as "Health Insurance Manual 15,” or "HIM-15”. It can be found at 1 Medicare and Medicaid Guide (CCH) Para. 5849D-67. The version of § 1417A quoted in the text became effective in October of 1979; prior to that time the introductory paragraph stated that "[p]roviders must maintain sufficient data in form of a daily log (or similar daily record) to support the statements submitted with the cost report. The data in the daily log or record must be reflected in á manner so as to provide an adequate audit trail____”
In 1982, § 1417A was again revised. The 1982 revision retained the language regarding a “daily log or (similar daily record)” and an "adequate audit trail", but eliminated the seven specific categories of required data. In their place § 1417A now requires simply that the records "contain sufficient information to allow evaluation of the reasonableness of the costs incurred for therapy services furnished under arrangements.”
. When questioned about claimed holiday hours by auditors, Mr. Chilman conceded that he had not actually worked those hours, but rather had been on call. PRRB Hearing Record at 1451.
. During its initial audit for 1979, Blue Cross was unable to determine from the records submitted which patients treated were covered by Medicare, what therapeutic procedures were provided to each patient, how much the Hospital charged each patient and the basis for computation of that charge. Corrected and resubmitted records led Blue Cross to the same result. Ultimately, the Hospital attempted to construct a therapy log through use of daily appointment schedules, individual patient medical records, charge slips and the like. This procedure provided much of the information that earlier submissions had lacked, but still failed to satisfy Blue Cross.
. The Hospital’s assertion that it was not properly notified of the daily log requirement of § 1417A of the Manual is absurd. The revision of the Manual that announced the new limitations on reimbursement for contract therapy services and the daily log requirement was mailed to the Hospital and other Medicare providers in 1975. It makes no difference that the auditors "only” notified the Hospital’s administrator in 1979 that the Hospital’s records were inadequate. Any failure by the Administrator to advise interested Hospital personnel is not the fault of Blue Cross or of the Secretary, and does not effect the validity of the Manual.
. "Although payment may be made on various bases the objective, whatever method of computation is used, will be to approximate as closely as practicable the actual cost (both direct and indirect) of services rendered to the beneficiaries of the program so that under any method of determining costs, the costs of services of individuals covered by the program will not be borne by individuals not covered, and the costs of services of individuals not covered will not be borne by the program."
. Whether the Secretary
must
deny reimbursement if provider records are inadequate is, of course, not an issue before us in this case. Nevertheless, the plain language of
. After defining "reasonable cost”,
[s]uch regulation shall ... take into account both direct and indirect costs of providers of services ... in order that, under the methods of determining costs, the necessary costs of 811 F.2d — 10 efficiently delivering covered services to individuals covered by the insurance programs established by this subchapter will not be borne by individuals not so covered, and the costs with respect to individuals not so covered will not be borne by such insurance programs____