At its annual Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., the American Association for Homecare (AAHomecare) announced its intention to create a system to track Medicare audits and the problems they are causing for DME providers and Medicare beneficiaries.
“Good data informs good decisions,” AAHomecare President/CEO Tom Ryan said in making the announcement. “We’re ready to work on behalf of the industry to collect and quantify the impacts of audits and present compelling facts that policy-makers cannot ignore.”
Medicare audits continue to be a serious money and time drain for providers who have to fight to be paid for their products and services, then often have to fight after the fact to keep their payments.
“AAHomecare member companies are feeling the pain of audits and are suffering financially,” the association said in its news announcement. “This coupled with the bidding program has forced beneficiaries to find new providers and redo documentation. The [General Accounting Office] has raised questions about the efficiency and effectiveness of the audit system and the administrative burden on providers.”
In developing an audit-tracking system, AAHomecare consulted with the American Hospital Association regarding its system and met with Provider Consulting Solutions, the company that developed it.
AAHomecare’s version, the association promises, “will collect hard facts” to show how Medicare audits are hurting the industry and by extension the beneficiaries Medicare is supposed to be serving.
