NCPA wants to stop double fees for Medicare Part B services

The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) is urging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to stop requiring duplicative fees from pharmacists.

Pharmacies providing Medicare Part B services such as immunization and durable medical equipment supplies must pay 2 enrollment/screening fees for the same screening to be performed twice. This is occurring, according to NCPA, even though the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), included a provision allowing CMS to stop requiring the duplicate fee.

“These fees hit small, independent pharmacies disproportionately, who are already overly burdened in Part B by excessive accreditation fees, aggressive audits, and low payments. Pharmacies are simply at the breaking point with these additional dual revalidation fees,” John Coster, PhD, RPh, NCPA’s senior vice president of government affairs, wrote in a letter to CMS.

The ACA states that a single institutional provider should only have to pay the fee once, according to Coster.

“If Congress had intended for a single provider to pay 2 different fees, according to the type of service provided, it would have said so,” Coster wrote. CMS is in plain violation of the ACA requirement on application fees and should revise the regulation, Coster added.

A CMS spokesperson declined an e-mail request by

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