Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Document Identifiers: CMS-R-131, CMS-P-0015A, CMS-R-70 and CMS-R-72]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Health and Human Services (HHS). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is announcing an opportunity for the public to comment on CMS' intention to collect information from the public. Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), federal agencies are required to publish notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> concerning each proposed collection of information, including each proposed extension or reinstatement of an existing collection of information, and to allow a second opportunity for public comment on the notice. Interested persons are invited to send comments regarding the burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including the necessity and utility of the proposed information collection for the proper performance of the agency's functions, the accuracy of the estimated burden, ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected, and the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology to minimize the information collection burden. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on the collection(s) of information must be received by the OMB desk officer by December 22, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice to <E T="03">www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.</E> Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. To obtain copies of a supporting statement and any related forms for the proposed collection(s) summarized in this notice, please access the CMS PRA website by copying and pasting the following web address into your web browser: <E T="03">https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/PaperworkReductionActof1995/PRA-Listing.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> William Parham at (410) 786-4669. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) (44 U.S.C. 3501-3520), federal agencies must obtain approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for each collection of information they conduct or sponsor. The term “collection of information” is defined in 44 U.S.C. 3502(3) and 5 CFR 1320.3(c) and includes agency requests or requirements that members of the public submit reports, keep records, or provide information to a third party. Section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the PRA (44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2)(A)) requires federal agencies to publish a 30-day notice in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> concerning each proposed collection of information, including each proposed extension or reinstatement of an existing collection of information, before submitting the collection to OMB for approval. To comply with this requirement, CMS is publishing this notice that summarizes the following proposed collection(s) of information for public comment. 1. <E T="03">Title of Information Collection:</E> Advance Beneficiary Notice of Non-coverage; <E T="03">Type of Information Collection Request:</E> Revision with change of a currently approved collection; <E T="03">Use:</E> The use of the Advance Beneficiary Notice of Non-coverage (ABN) is to inform Medicare beneficiaries of their liability under specific conditions. This has been available since the “limitation on liability” provisions in section 1879 of the Social Security Act (the Act) were enacted in 1972 (Pub. L. 92-603). The ABN, Form CMS-R-13 was designed to inform Medicare beneficiaries of their potential financial liability. ABNs are not given every time items and services are delivered. Rather, ABNs are given only when a physician, provider, practitioner, or supplier anticipates that Medicare will not provide payment in specific cases. An ABN may be given, and the beneficiary may subsequently choose not to receive the item or service. An ABN may also be issued because of other applicable statutory requirements other than § 1862(a)(1) such as when a beneficiary wants to obtain an item from a supplier who has not met Medicare supplier number requirements, as listed in section 1834(j)(1) of the Act or when statutory requirements for issuance specific to HHAs are applicable. <E T="03">Form Number:</E> CMS-R-131 (OMB control number: 0938-0566); <E T="03">Frequency:</E> Yearly; <E T="03">Affected Public:</E> Private Sector, Business or other for profits, Not for profits institutions; <E T="03">Number of Respondents:</E> 1,723,755; <E T="03">Number of Responses:</E> 331,715,277; <E T="03">Total Annual Hours:</E> 38,701,221. (For questions regarding this collection contact Jennifer McCormick at 410-786-2852 or <E T="03">Jennifer.McCormick1@cms.hhs.gov.</E> ) 2. <E T="03">Title of Information Collection:</E> Revision of a currently approved collection; <E T="03">Title of Information Collection:</E> Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey; <E T="03">Use:</E> CMS is the largest single payer of health care in the United States. The agency plays a direct or indirect role in administering health insurance coverage for more than 150 million people across the Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and Health Insurance Marketplace populations. A critical aim for CMS is to be an effective steward, major force, and trustworthy partner in supporting innovative approaches to improving quality, accessibility, and affordability in healthcare. CMS also aims to put patients first in the delivery of their health care needs. The Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) is the most comprehensive and complete survey available on the Medicare population and is essential in capturing information not otherwise collected through operational or administrative data on the Medicare program. The MCBS is a nationally-representative, longitudinal survey of Medicare beneficiaries that is sponsored by CMS and is directed by the Office of Enterprise Data and Analytics (OEDA). MCBS data collection is primarily conducted by phone and is supplemented with limited video interviewing or in-person visits. The survey captures beneficiary information whether aged or disabled, living in the community or facility, or serviced by managed care or fee-for-service. Data produced as part of the MCBS are enhanced with administrative data ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> fee-for-service claims, prescription drug event data, enrollment, etc.) to provide users with more accurate and complete estimates of total health care costs and utilization. The MCBS has been continuously fielded for more than 30 years, encompassing over 1.2 million interviews and more than 140,000 survey participants. Respondents participate in up to 11 interviews over a four-year period. The MCBS provides a holistic view of Medicare beneficiaries' social and medical risk factors and rich information on the relationship between these risk factors, healthcare utilization, and health outcomes, at a point in time and over time. The MCBS continues to provide unique insight into the Medicare program and helps CMS and its external stakeholders better understand and evaluate the impact of existing programs and significant new policy initiatives. MCBS data are used to assess potential changes to the Medicare program. For example, MCBS data were instrumental in supporting the initial implementation of the Medicare prescription drug benefit and continue providing a means to evaluate prescription drug costs and out-of-pocket burden for these drugs to Medicare beneficiaries. Beginning in Fall 2026, this proposed revision to the clearance will remove questionnaire items that are no longer relevant for administration. The revisions will result in a net decrease in respondent burden. <E T="03">Form Number:</E> CMS-P-0015A (OMB control number 0938-0568); <E T="03">Frequency:</E> Occasionally; <E T="03">Affected Public:</E> Business or other for-profits and Not-for-profits Institutions; <E T="03">Number of Respondents:</E> 13,568; <E T="03">Number of Responses:</E> 35,015; <E T="03">Total Annual Hours:</E> 32,258. (For questions regarding this collection, contact William Long at 410-786-7927). 3. <E T="03">Type of Information Collection Request:</E> Reinstatement without change of a previously approved collection; <E T="03">Title of Information Collection:</E> Information Collection Requirements in HSQ-110, Acquisition, Protection and Disclosure of Peer review Organization Information and Supporting Regulations; <E T="03">Use:</E> The Peer Review Improvement Act of 1982 authorizes quality improvement organizations (QIOs), formally known as peer review organizations (PROs), to acquire information necessary to fulfill their duties and functions and places limits on disclosure of the information. The QIOs are required to provide notices to the affected parties when disclosing information about them. These requirements serve to protect the rights of the affected parties. The information provided in these notices is used by the patients, practitioners and providers to: obtain access to the data maintained and collected on them by the QIOs; add additional data or make changes to existing QIO data; and reflect in the QIO's record the reasons for the QIO's disagreeing with an individual's or provider's request for amendment. Beneficia ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 14k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━