Opioid Prescriber Sent Back to HHS to Fight Medicare Exclusion

A nurse practitioner in western New York who was kicked out of the Medicare program over his opioid-prescribing practices must exhaust health department administrative appeals before taking the fight to court, a federal district court ruled Wednesday.

Louis Pawlowski said in a lawsuit that the Health and Human Services Department violated his due process rights when it notified him that his Medicare enrollment and billing privileges would be revoked for 10 years. He also challenged the department’s application and interpretation of federal regulations, and the length of his disenrollment.

A Medicare drug-integrity contractor found in 2021 that Pawlowski had prescribed ...