**GAO-03-1056**                      Published: Sep 30, 2003. Publicly Released: Sep 30, 2003.                  

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## Highlights

In 1999, the Health Care Financing Administration, now called the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), proposed terminating an exception to a payment rule that had permitted laboratories to receive direct payment from Medicare when providing technical pathology services that had been outsourced by certain hospitals. The Congress enacted provisions in the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000 (BIPA) to delay the termination. The BIPA provisions directed GAO to report on the number of outsourcing hospitals and their service volumes and the effect of the termination of direct laboratory payments on hospitals and laboratories, as well as on access to technical pathology services by Medicare beneficiaries. GAO analyzed Medicare inpatient and outpatient hospital and laboratory claims data from 2001 to develop its estimates.

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## Topics

Health Care

BeneficiariesCost analysisCost controlFederal regulationsRural hospitalsHealth care programsHealth care servicesHospital care servicesHospitalsLaboratoriesMedicarePayments