06/23/2022

More Phase 4 Payments being distributed

HRSA announced last week that it is sending out the latest batch of Phase 4 Provider Relief Fund (PRF) payments ($427M) to 1,400 providers nationwide. This latest distribution brings the total of Phase 4 payments made to date to $14.3B of the available $17B. Providers will receive an email notification if they are one of the providers scheduled to receive a payment. Regardless of whether you receive the email or not, all providers still awaiting a Phase 4 payment check their bank accounts over the next few days to see if a new payment has arrived from HHS/HRSA. From past experience, providers do not always receive the email notifications from HRSA in a timely manner. 

Given the announcement timing, we would expect the payments would have arrived in the early part of this week.  This will not be the final batch of payments and HRSA said that it is “working to process all remaining applications as quickly as possible.”  HRSA’s pattern has been to send out a batch of payments around the 20th of each month and if that continues, we should expect the next round of payments around the 20th of July. 

Given the payments continue to trickle out, it is likely that HRSA will add an additional reporting period.  Finally, some payments are unable to be distributed because the provider has not yet established an OptumPay account, which allows HRSA to transmit payments in excess of $100, 000 via ACH. More information on this process is available in this LeadingAge article.