Accreditation Details Confusing Down to the Wire; 81,000+ Haven’t Reported Bonding Info

ATLANTA--The mandatory deadlines for DMEPOS accreditation (Oct. 1) and surety bonds (Oct. 2) are now only weeks away, and providers are scrambling to make sure their accreditation and bonding information is on file with the National Supplier Clearinghouse. If it isn’t, CMS officials have said, Medicare billing privileges will be revoked. 
 
Agency officials have made that very clear, in fact.
 
During an Open Door Forum in July, CMS’ Jim Bossenmeyer said, “This is very simple … If you are not in compliance on Oct. 1 [for accreditation] or not in compliance on Oct. 2 for the surety bond, the [National Supplier Clearinghouse] will take the necessary actions to revoke your billing privileges.”

What isn’t so clear is exactly how providers are supposed to verify their information was received and/or has been filed correctly.

On that same Open Door call, Bossenmeyer, director of CMS’ Division of Provider/Supplier Enrollment, said there was “not a process whereby you can check the information with the NSC.” He advised providers to keep copies of any information they had sent off.

Providers have been flooding the NSC with calls to check on their information, but on an Open Door call for pharmacies Aug. 26, Bossenmeyer said the NSC contractor (Palmetto GBA) doesn’t have the resources to field all the calls. He said the accrediting organization will inform the NSC that the accreditation has been completed.

DME providers must notify the NSC that they have obtained a surety bond, however, and CMS staff encouraged listeners on the call to maintain proof that they sent a copy of the bond to the NSC, such as a receipt from the delivery company or the post office.
 
According to a report from Rose Schafhauser, executive director of the Midwest Association of Medical Equipment Services and a member of the National Supplier Clearinghouse Advisory Committee, on Aug. 24 the NSC sent letters “to all suppliers who did not have either accreditation or bond or had neither.”

There were apparently a lot of those letters. In a status report, NSC advised the committee that 81,288 suppliers who should have surety bonds for their locations had yet to report, with 500 reports pending.