§ 413.60 Payments to providers: General.

(a) The fiscal contractors will establish a basis for interim payments to each provider. This may be done by one of several methods. If an contractor is already paying the provider on a cost basis, the contractor may adjust its rate of payment to an estimate of the result under the Medicare principles of reimbursement. If no organization is paying the provider on a cost basis, the contractor may obtain the previous year's financial statement from the provider and, by applying the principles of reimbursement, compute or approximate an appropriate rate of payment. The interim payment may be related to the last year's average per diem, or to charges, or to any other ready basis of approximating costs.