Lenders making secured loans to health care providers with Medicare and Medicaid receivables should be aware of limitations on their ability to perfect security interests in such borrowers’ deposit accounts. Secured lenders may perfect security interests in their borrowers’ accounts receivable (and identifiable cash proceeds therefrom) by filing UCC financing statements, but when proceeds of those accounts receivable are received by borrowers and deposited into borrowers’ deposit accounts, security interests in the deposit accounts themselves can be perfected only by obtaining "control" over the deposit accounts pursuant to § 9-104(2) of the UCC. In order to perfect such security interests in deposit accounts, revolving credit facilities are, therefore, typically subject to deposit account control agreements. In a deposit account control agreement, the borrower, the secured lender and the depository bank agree that the depository bank will comply with instructions from the secured lender directing disposition of the funds in the deposit account, without further consent by the borrower. This arrangement enables the secured lender to obtain control over the deposit account, thereby perfecting its security interest in the deposit account pursuant to UCC §9-312(b).
Loans to health care providers who receive Medicare and Medicaid payments, however, pose special problems for secured lenders seeking to perfect their security interests in deposit accounts. Medicare/ Medicaid anti-assignment regulations provide that no payment to be made to a provider of services under Medicare may be made to any other person under assignment (42 U.S.C. 1395g(c)) and no payment for any care or service provided under Medicaid to an individual may be made to anyone under assignment other than such individual or the person or institution providing such care or service (42 U.S.C. 1396a (32)). According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Intermediary Manual §3488.2, payments due to a provider of services may be sent to a bank for deposit in the provider’s account, but only if the check is in the name of the provider and the provider certifies that: (i) "the bank is neither providing financing to the provider nor acting on behalf of another party in connection with the provision of such financing," and (ii) "the provider has sole control of the account, and the bank is subject only to the provider’s instructions regarding the account." This means that any instruction given by a borrower who is a health care provider to its depository bank to transfer funds from the borrower’s deposit account, in which Medicare and Medicaid payments are deposited, to the account of its secured lender must be revocable by the borrower. Because the depository bank must be subject only to the borrower’s instructions regarding the deposit account, it cannot also be subject to instructions from the secured lender, and an arrangement satisfying the Medicare/Medicaid anti-assignment regulations, therefore, cannot give a secured lender "control" of the provider’s deposit account under UCC §9-104.
Many secured lenders find a partial solution to this perfection problem through the use of an arrangement commonly referred to as a "Double Lockbox." In a Double Lockbox arrangement, the health care provider borrower, secured lender, and depository bank enter into a revocable control agreement in which the borrower gives revocable instructions to the depository bank to transfer funds received in the borrower’s Medicare/Medicaid deposit account to an account held by the secured lender on a daily basis. Because the borrower’s instructions are revocable, a Double Lockbox arrangement is permissible under the Medicare/Medicaid anti-assignment regulations. Although it does not perfect the secured lender’s security interest in the borrower’s Medicare/Medicaid deposit account, the daily transfer of funds allows the secured lender to diligently monitor the deposit account and become aware if no funds are being swept, providing the best outcome available without violating the anti-assignment regulations.
Depository banks must be subject only to health care providers’ instructions regarding deposit accounts containing Medicaid/Medicare receivables, so any deposit accounts of health care provider borrowers that contain only receivables from commercial insurers or other non-Medicare/Medicaid sources may be subject to traditional deposit account control agreements. If a borrower maintains such a non-Medicare/Medicaid deposit account, its revocable control agreement may provide that the depository bank transfer the funds received in the borrower’s Medicare/Medicaid deposit account to its non-Medicare/Medicaid deposit account, which is subject to a control agreement perfecting the secured lender’s security interest, rather than to an account held by the secured lender.
