Physicians who may be eligible for the Medicare Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) bonus payment should be aware of the following information and educational resources regarding determining eligibility, in order to minimize errors during the post-payment review process.
Information on the HPSA bonus, including the list of zip codes eligible for automatic payment, can be found at on the CMS website here.
Two MLN Matters articles are available which go into further detail:
“2012 Annual Update for the HPSA Bonus Payments” (MM7517): here and
“HPSA Bonus Payment Policy Reminders” (SE1202): here.
Websites to help determine existing designations and eligibility for the Medicare HPSA physician bonus include: HPSA Find – to identify designations within a state,
FFIEC– to identify census tracts by entering an address, and
Data Warehouse HPSA– to see if an area is listed as being in an eligible area.
