Currently, Medicare beneficiaries who are not officially admitted to a hospital may be classified under “observation status,” which is treated as an outpatient procedure for billing purposes. Unfortunately, the common practice of placing a beneficiary on observation status can have significant financial consequences for Medicare beneficiaries since Medicare Part A and its related coverage rules only apply to actual inpatient care admissions. This may lead patients, many who are extremely sick and may need skilled nursing care, to spend many days in the hospital and be charged for services that Medicare would have otherwise paid had they been admitted. Furthermore, hospitals have up to one year to retroactively change admission status to observation, leading unsuspecting beneficiaries with thousands of dollars in bills for SNF care they believed would be covered by Medicare.
