Health Care Financing Administration--Medicare program; intermediary nominations, contracts, evaluations, and...

These final regulations establish criteria and standards for evaluating the performance of agencies or organizations serving or desiring to serve as fiscal intermediaries under the Medicare program. They also authorize the Administrator to assign or reassign providers of services to particular intermediaries or to designate a single intermediary to serve a class of providers on a regional or national basis after considering intermediary performance measured against the criteria and standards. Affected providers and intermediaries will be given a notice of assignment or reassignment and intermediaries will be afforded a hearing. The purpose of these regulations is to promote increased efficiency in the administration of the Medicare program.