Medicare and Medicare Advantage Programs; Notification Procedures for Hospital Discharges : Important Message From Medicare

Summary of Changes to CMS-R-193

May 14, 2007

Based on public comments received during the 30-day comment period that closed on May 6, 2007, we made the following changes to CMS-R-193 (the Important Message from Medicare (IM)):

• We removed the word “Attending” from the physician blank.

• We added a line to enter the hospital provider name and provider ID number on page 2 of the notice.

• We have bolded the text that describes the deadline for requesting a review.

• We removed the bullet stating: “If you do not believe you have enough time to act on your rights, call 1-800-Medicare” since those operators to not have authority to extend the deadline for patients, or to otherwise intervene.

• Consistent with longstanding CMS policy, the form instructions for the IM have been revised to explicitly require that information entered on the notice be legible and in 12-point font or the equivalent.

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