How to Return Medicare Overpayments

Medicare billing and payments are not exact sciences. Medicare may accidentally send payment for services not performed or pay too much for a procedure. Medicare will sometimes catch the error and send a request for a refund. However, providers may be the ones to notice overpayments when they do their regular financial audits or as soon as they receive the mistaken payment. Federal law requires providers to send all overpayments back to Medicare. Failure to do so can result in fines and criminal charges. Send overpayment refunds as soon as you find the mistake.

Instructions

• 1

  Contact Medicare by phone using the phone number on your Medicare invoice. Request to speak to a representative about an overpayment. Give the representative your name or the name of your practice, the provider number, the claim number, the patient's policy number and the overpayment amount. Give a short explanation of the reason for the overpayment. Ask the representative for the address to which you should send overpayment refunds.

• 2

  Mail the payment in the form of a cashier's check so you have a record of payment.

• 3

  Contact Medicare if you do not receive acknowledgment of your payment by mail within 30 days of submitting it.