Opinion ID: 771834
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Plaintiffs' Requested Relief

Text: 33 As stated above, the district court declined to grant plaintiffs' request for summary expedited final judgment in the form of a simple recalculation of the benefits owed. It first stated that plaintiffs' requested relief rested on the faulty assumption that this Court, in its prior opinion, had confirmed the findings of the ALJ opinions, and had, in effect, made a legal determination that concurrent invasive monitoring was a medical, and not a surgical, procedure, and that it was therefore proper to recalculate the benefits due without reference to the one-and-one-half rule. See Furlong, 2000 WL 194843, at . Second, the court found that it lacked jurisdiction to conduct such a recalculation. See id. It reasoned that the only way it would have jurisdiction to conduct the recalculation was if it found that due process required direct judicial review of the carriers' benefit determinations, which it did not. See id. at -. Finally, the district court found that to grant plaintiffs' requested relief would be to prevent HCFA from correcting its own errors. Id. at  (citing Abbey, 978 F.2d at 45). 34 We agree completely with the district court on its first observation. In our prior opinion, we did not adopt the findings of the ALJs that concurrent invasive monitoring was a medical procedure. We remain agnostic on this policy issue, which is well within the discretion of the Department. Our earlier opinion found that the ALJ opinions provided a basis for a property right, but did not confirm or adopt the findings of the ALJs as a matter of law. Therefore, it would have been inappropriate for the district court to enter judgment, as no determination of the relevant legal question had been made. 35 As to the second basis for the district court's ruling, we agree that, because due process does not require direct judicial review of the carrier decisions, it would have been improper for the district court to grant the requested relief. However, because of our determination that this is a methodology case as opposed to an amount case, we are not troubled, as the district court was, with the effect that such review would have had on the decision of physicians to accept assignment; both assignee and non-assigned physicians bringing methodology challenges would have the same right to review, and this does nothing to disturb their different treatment with respect to amount challenges. 36 Finally, and most importantly, this Court agrees with the district court that it would be improper to enter judgment as requested by the plaintiffs because to do so would be to take the responsibility for correctly construing agency policy from the agency itself. See Abbey, 978 F.2d at 45. As we stated in Abbey, Giving the agency first crack at correcting its own errors . . . conserves judicial resources. Id. This ground suffices to support the district court's ruling. The Department possesses the requisite expertise to construe its policies and to conduct the somewhat complicated calculations involved in resolving these claims. Putting aside any jurisdictional problems, it would have been unwise for the district court to have needlessly taken on these tasks. We therefore affirm the district court's denial of plaintiffs' motion. 6