Provider agreement assignment

Definition

Whether a Medicare agreement passes to the buyer, which depends on what the seller is.

Why It Matters

The trade splits and the split decides the deal. A certified clinic or rehabilitation agency holds a provider agreement, and on a change of ownership that agreement is automatically assigned to the new owner, carrying every condition it was issued under including any existing plan of correction. A therapist group in private practice is a supplier and holds no such agreement, so a change of ownership that also changes the tax identification number requires a new enrollment application from the new owner. Structure matters too: a merger creating a new corporation is a change of ownership, while a transfer of stock into the existing corporation is not.