But he said the Government would "encourage the use of telephone hearings."

He said many appeals were filed by health-care providers and that they appeared to like telephone hearings.

The lawyer received a list of patients, contacted Ms. Wheeler and got her a telephone hearing and her stretcher.

For most people, face-to-face appeal hearings in courthouses and offices across the country would be replaced by "a single hearing office, utilizing a telephone hearing process."

The agency expects to handle 24,000 appeals a year, according to the document, which says that telephone hearings "will be conducted in at least 75 percent" of the cases.

Congressmen and lawyers for the elderly expressed concern that the change was intended to placate Congress, but that recipients might still be pressed by the agency to accept telephone hearings.

A18 The Administration retreated from a plan to substitute telephone hearings for face-to-face hearings in most disputes involving Medicare benefits, under strong criticism from legislators and the elderly.

Judge Loretta Preska of Federal District Court in Manhattan issued a temporary restraining order against Highfields on Wednesday night after a telephone hearing.

The critics of the plan argued that telephone hearings appear to violate Federal law, would cause hardships for people with impaired hearing and could threaten the integrity of the Medicare appeal process.

At a Congressional hearing Dr. William L. Roper, chief of the Medicare agency, said he had reconsidered and decided that telephone hearings would be "strictly optional and voluntary."

Judge Patrick E. Carr of Federal District Court issued his ruling today after holding a telephone hearing Friday on Mr. Guste's request for a restraining order to block enforcement of the law.

Currently, most arbitration providers allow parties to carry out online only part of the arbitration process, e.g. parties may download claim forms, the submission of documents through standard email or secure web interface, the use of telephone hearings, etc.

Seeking More Efficiency The Federal Health Care Financing Administration, which runs the Medicare program, "will operate a single hearing office, utilizing a telephone hearing process to the maximum extent possible," the agency says in a summary of its plans.

In a letter this month to another member of Congress, Dr. William L. Roper, chief of the health care financing agency, said, "We will encourage the use of telephone hearings" because they will be "less stressful for aged beneficiaries."

It is not clear what impact the conclusions will have, but a lawyer for KPMG told the bankruptcy judge, Peter J. Walsh, at a telephone hearing yesterday morning, that KPMG objected to the release of documents it felt were confidential.

Public prosecutors were unable to find proof to support the hypothesis of a genuine abduction (telephone hearings implemented to track possible calls from the kidnappers indicated that Gerez himself, his concubine and political comrades maybe responsible), and consequently they have followed the theory of self-kidnapping.