Clinical Research Billing Guidance (CRB)

FAQs – Find answers to the most commonly asked questions here.

Clinical Research Billing Policy

For assistance in pricing outpatient-care items to build your initial budget or proposal, please contact the Calendar Review & Analysis Office (CRAO) by emailing the specifics of your request to: [email protected].

Email request should follow this format:

• Email subject should be "Grant Pricing Request: PI-include Grant or protocol ID (If available)"
• CC your CTSU contact (If known) on the email request to keep them in the loop
• Email should include current contact information for yourself and/or a team member knowledgeable about the project and available to respond to questions that come up during the pricing process
• Be sure to include any applicable protocol or other documentation. CRAO will provide a list of Chargemaster prices for requested/protocol-driven items and services to facilitate the creation of a true-cost budget
• Please don't forget to mark email "High Importance"

Medicare should not be billed for anything that is not “reasonable and necessary.” While “reasonable and necessary” is a term that Medicare uses to determine coverage, commercial health plans will often use the term “medically necessary.” Each health plan will have a definition of what constitutes a medically necessary service that is covered by the health plan. Experimental and investigational items and services are generally excluded from the definition of “reasonable and necessary” and “medically necessary.” While you may draw some general conclusions about health plan coverage by looking at Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage guidelines and Medicare guidelines, remember that each health plan is unique. If the services you are contemplating providing are costly, and the possibility exists that health plans will deny coverage, you should establish a prior authorization process to determine if the services will be paid by health plans. If services will not be covered, your patient/study participants should be advised of that fact. If health plans will not cover the services, your budget should include funding by the research sponsor or by another funding source to pay for the services. Items and services provided solely for data collection or screening are generally excluded from the definition of reasonable and necessary. Items and services billed to any payer (commercial or governmental) should be those that are routinely provided to patients who are not participants in a research study. If a research study requires specific items and services be completed at a greater frequency for study participants than required for non‐participants, those items and services may not be considered reasonable and necessary and may not be covered by health plans.

For additional coverage guidance for governmental and commercial health plans, see the relevant FAQ “Who can provide me with guidance regarding what is covered by Medicare and other commercial health plans?” CRAO FAQs

All clinical research studies initiated after 11/1/06 that involve items and services which are potentially billable through the Michigan Medicine system are required to have a billing calendar.  Following billing calendar review and approval, the Revenue Cycle Research Billing Team (RCRBs) will use the final billing calendar from OnCore to route charges appropriately, OnCore will generate a report for the RCRBs to route charges.  The principal investigator (PI) is responsible for ensuring that accurate billing is occurring for his or her study and that the approved billing calendar is being followed by the study team. If the PI determines that changes need to be made to the billing calendar after the billing calendar has been approved, an amendment is required.

Medicare has specific policies associated with clinical research billing. These policies cover investigational device research as well as all other types of clinical research.

Investigational Devices (IDE and non-significant risk)

Medicare should not be billed for ANY items or services associated with an investigational device (IDE or non‐significant risk) study without prior approval from the local Medicare Administrative Contractor for Medicare Part A and Part B. If additional information is needed regarding this, see the relevant guidance document.

In general, Medicare covers the routine care costs of qualifying clinical research studies as well as reasonable and necessary items and services used to diagnose and treat complications arising from participation in a qualifying clinical trial.

Medicare has established “qualifying” criteria for assessing what items and services are covered in a clinical research study. The “qualifying” criteria are as follows:

• The subject or purpose of the trial is the evaluation of an item or service that falls within a Medicare benefit category and is not specifically excluded from Medicare coverage, such as cosmetic surgery.
• The trial has therapeutic intent (the study is not designed exclusively to test toxicity or disease pathophysiology).
• The trial must enroll patients with a diagnosed disease (trials of diagnostic interventions may enroll healthy patients as “controls”).
• The trial must meet the seven (7) desirable characteristics. (Please see below for a description of the characteristics.) Some studies have been deemed by CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) to meet these characteristics.

Other third‐party payers have varying policies associated with clinical research. Some third party payers follow Medicare policies and others may not pay for any items and services provided in the context of a research study even if the items and services provided are considered routine care by the study team and the patient would get the same items/services if they were not taking part in the research. The only way to know with certainty what is or is not covered for a particular subject is through pre-authorization with the subject’s insurance company. Your contacts for insurance plan coverage are the Professional Billing Accounts Receivable Directors.

Work Guide - See directions on how to use the charge routing template and configuration TXT file for bulk load of clinical research billing issues in JIRA.

CRBI JIRA Instructions

Charge routing template - Download the template; add data related to clinical research billing issues for import into JIRA for ticket submission. Instructions on how to fill out this template are found on the front page of the template.

Configuration TXT file - Download this file to be used when importing clinical research billing issues using the bulk load function of JIRA.

If you require corrections to your research account or subject, please obtain CRBI JIRA access by contacting [email protected]. 

For questions/concerns please email [email protected] with subject line CRBI/RCRB help.

The Calendar Review and Analysis Office (CRAO) is the central contact point for clinical research billing error notifications received from your subjects or as a result of your monthly account reconciliation.

The CRAO has immediate access to documents associated with your approved billing calendars (i.e. protocol, final billing calendar, informed consent, etc.) and therefore will be able to investigate and contact the Revenue Cycle Research Billing Team to ensure billing errors are corrected timely. 

Contact [email protected] with any questions.

Study teams will complete this process in MiChart. For more information, view the Tip Sheet: "In Basket - Unscheduled Occurrence."

Creating a full cost budget is an important step to take before reviewing a sponsor budget so that an appropriate assessment of the sponsor budget can be made. The full cost budget will help with the assessment of the feasibility of completing the research and allows the researcher and department Administrator, to know how much money is needed before negotiating with a sponsor or making funding requests. Budgets are created with the use of OnCore with preloaded fee schedules already set at the 80% research discounted rate. When selecting items and services for your study, it is important to use appropriate billing codes. Billing codes must never be selected based on the available dollars (i.e. backing into” a sponsor budget). For additional information regarding creating budgets, contact your department research administrator or Grant Services & Analysis in the Medical School.

Money provided by a sponsor to pay for patient‐specific billable items and services must be used to cover these services and should not be reallocated to cover study team effort. You must read the clinical trial agreement and review the sponsor’s budget incorporated in that agreement to determine how the sponsor wants the funds spent. Do not assume that the sponsor is providing money for any purpose. Many sponsors will specifically indicate how funds must be spent. If the sponsor has agreed to pay for certain items or services or provides items/supplies for free, do not bill a health plan or the patient for those items/supplies or services.

Medicare generally covers reasonable and necessary items and services used to diagnose and treat complications arising from participation in clinical trials in qualifying clinical trials. Medicare Secondary Payer regulations, however, have been interpreted by Medicare to prevent the Medicare program from covering services related to these complications when another party has assumed responsibility for payment. Most commercial health plans will not cover items and services that are the responsibility of another party, often called “third party” or “other party” payment exclusions.

It is the responsibility of the study team to ensure that sponsors are billed for adverse events and/or complications for industry‐sponsored clinical trials. For one‐on‐one counseling on completing the subject injury sections of your consent, contact the CRAO Dept. at [email protected].

A health plan and/or the patient should not be billed for any item or service that the informed consent says will be provided free or at no charge. The language in the informed consent signed by the patient should be followed even if the language in the consent conflicts with the study protocol and research sponsor agreement since, once signed by the subject, it becomes a legal document. It is the responsibility of the principal investigator to make sure the protocol, clinical trial agreement and informed consent are all consistent. Also, there are three types of “trigger” language that CRAO is looking for in the consent as an attempt to protect Michigan Medicine from negative financial consequences. These items are:

1. Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) language
2. Medicare is the last payer by choice
3. Inappropriate or lack of subject injury language

For more information on each of these types of language, please contact CRAO at [email protected].

As a researcher, you should ensure that the money being provided by a sponsor is appropriate and seems reasonable for the work and services required to conduct the research. Compensation in excess of “fair market value” may be construed as “kick back” under certain federal and state laws and statutes if one purpose is to generate business between the parties.