Page 75 - 2020 Annual Reports Book updated1

claims for loss caused by, relating to, or resulting from the administration or use of FDA-authorized
COVID-19 tests.

CMS Facilitates Access to COVID-19 Testing for Medicare & Medicaid Beneficiaries

On April 30, 2020, CMS issued a second round of “sweeping regulatory waivers and rule changes”
designed to make it easier for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to get tested for COVID-19 and to
ease regulatory burdens on providers during the Public Health Emergency.

Among other changes, CMS said that Medicare will no longer require an order from the treating
physician or other practitioner for beneficiaries to get COVID-19 tests and certain laboratory tests
required as part of a COVID-19 diagnosis. During the Public Health Emergency, COVID-19 tests may be
covered when ordered by any healthcare professional authorized to do so under state law. To help
ensure that Medicare beneficiaries have broad access to COVID-19 testing, a written practitioner’s order
is no longer required for the COVID-19 test for Medicare payment purposes.

Additionally, CMS announced it will pay for FDA-authorized COVID-19 serology tests as they are
reasonable and necessary under Medicare law for beneficiaries with known current or known prior
COVID-19 infection or suspected current or suspected past COVID-19 infection.

Legislative Symposium Falls Victim to Coronavirus

Along with AMT’s national convention in Albuquerque, the COVID-19 crisis claimed an early meeting
casualty in the annual Clinical laboratory Legislative Symposium and Legislative Day activities scheduled
for March 16 & 17 in Washington. AMT cosponsors the events each year with ASCLS, ASCP, CLMA, AGT,
and NSH.

Ten AMT members were among 100+ laboratorians who had registered for this year’s symposium. As
recently as five days before the scheduled event, its organizers were full steam ahead with plans to go
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forward despite the rapidly accelerating virus situation. It wasn’t until March 12 , when Congress
announced it was closing all Capitol Hill offices to the public, that the organizers pulled the plug on this
year’s symposium. The event won’t be rescheduled in 2020 but will resume next March.

PAMA Data Reporting Delayed to 2022; CLFS Fee Cuts Frozen through 2021

Two major Congressional enactments have resulted in a two-year delay in the next data reporting
period under the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (PAMA) and a one-year freeze in price cuts
under the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule (CLFS).

First, Congress included the Laboratory Access for Beneficiaries Act (LAB Act) in one of two year-end
consolidated appropriations bills that President Trump signed on Dec. 20, 2019. The LAB Act delayed by
one year the reporting of private-sector laboratory payment rate data to CMS, as required by Section
216 of PAMA. Then, in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) signed by the
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President on March 27 of this year, Congress delayed PAMA data reporting an additional year. As of
now, data reporting will occur between Jan. 1 and March 30, 2022. Neither the LAB Act nor the CARES
Act delayed the PAMA data collection period, which remains Jan. 1 – June 30, 2019.

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