HHS has reduced its Medicare appeals backlog by 88 percent, according to a March 29 status report.
The agency is required to reduce its backlog as the result of a 2018 federal court ruling, according to the American Hospital Association.
HHS has annual deadline-based targets for reducing the backlog. It has now hit its first three reduction targets and has made significant progress toward hitting the fourth, according to the report.
At the end of the first quarter of 2022, a total of 52,641 appeals remained pending at the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals, according to the report. There were 426,594 appeals identified in the 2018 court order.