(a) Initial living donor evaluations. When a recipient and donor elect to participate in a kidney paired exchange, the costs of the initial living donor evaluations are incurred by the originally intended recipient's TH, regardless of whether the living donor actually donates to their originally intended recipient, a kidney paired exchange recipient, or does not donate at all.

(b) Additional tests after a match. In a kidney paired exchange, regardless of whether an actual donation occurs, once the donor and recipient are matched, any additional tests requested by the recipient's TH and performed by the donor's TH, are billed to the recipient's TH as charges reduced to cost (using the donor's TH's cost to charge ratio) and included as acquisition costs on the recipient TH's Medicare cost report.

(c) Procurement and transport of a kidney. When a donor's TH procures and furnishes a kidney to a recipient's TH all of the following are applicable:

(1) All costs must be reasonable and necessary.

(2)(i) The donor's TH bills the recipient's TH.

(ii) The donor's TH bills its charges reduced to cost, or bills its applicable kidney SAC for the reasonable costs associated with procuring, packaging, and transporting the kidney.

(3) The donor's TH records the costs described in paragraph (c)(2)(ii) of this section on its Medicare cost report as kidney acquisition costs and offsets any payments received from the recipient's TH against its kidney acquisition costs.

(4) The recipient's TH records as part of its kidney acquisition costs -

(i) The amounts billed by the donor's TH for the reasonable costs associated with procuring, packaging, and transporting the organ; and

(ii) Any additional testing performed and billed by the donor's TH.

(d) Donor's procurement occurs at recipient TH. In a kidney-paired exchange—

(1) When a donor's TH does not procure a kidney, but the donor travels to the recipient's TH for the organ procurement, the reasonable costs associated with the organ procurement are included on the Medicare cost report of the recipient's TH; and

(2) The travel expenses of the living donor are not allowable Medicare costs.

[86 FR 73515, Dec. 27, 2021, as amended at 87 FR 72290, Nov. 23, 2022]