Injury-Related Medicare Claims

Question: I reached a settlement with State Farm insurance for my client. The client is eligible for Medicare and has had some unrelated medical bills paid by Medicare during the time he was seeking treatment for his injuries. State Farm has sent me paperwork to submit to MSPRC to provide State Farm proof that none of the accident related bills were paid by Medicare. I have done this in the past and it takes six weeks just to get the request into the system. Is there any faster way to do this since my clients did not receive any related payments from Medicare? I did not think this would be an issue since all accident related bills were paid by State Farm and they are aware of this. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Matt Garretson spoke at our Trial Lawyers Association meeting several weeks ago.

Thanks,

Montana Attorney

Answer: Regardless of whether or not Medicare has paid injury related claims, you still need to go through the process. The claim must still be reported to the COB (1-800-999-1118) and request for conditional payments sent to the MSRPC. Upon receipt, the MSPRC will canvass the claims from the injury date and if no claims have been paid they will send you a letter of no interest. At that point you would need to submit the settlement statement to the MSPRC and they will issue you a letter advising that they have closed the case.