Wednesday, December 4, 2013
WASHINGTON (Dec. 4, 2013)—AAHomecare strives to provide tools that assist home care providers in managing their businesses within the framework of complicated Medicare requirements. As a part of this goal, the Association’s Regulatory Council has created five processing checklists to assist both members and nonmembers in avoiding audits. These checklists have been reviewed by two attorneys with extensive backgrounds in home care, as well as several longstanding provider representatives known for their Medicare coverage criteria expertise.
AAHomecare members can download the checklists free from aahomecare.org using their member password. Any member who needs assistance with their password should send an e-mail to Gordon Barnes, manager of communications and member services, at gordonb@aahomecare.org, or call him at (202) 372-0759. For nonmembers, the checklists are available for $25 each as a single purchase or $20 each for orders of two or more.
AAHomecare is committed to updating and reviewing the checklists periodically to ensure that the most current coverage criteria and regulatory requirements are included. The Association is also in the process of creating additional checklists.
In addition, AAHomecare’s Regulatory Council has developed an internal audit tracking tool that will allow your company to monitor the volume of audits you are receiving by type of Medicare contractor. This Microsoft Excel spreadsheet has built-in calculations to better show the impact of audits. This tracking tool is offered free to both members and nonmembers with the goal of having every provider tracking and monitoring their volume of audits and the success of their appeals.
If you have any stories you’d like to tell about your Medicare audit experiences, please send them to auditproblems@aahomecare.org. Together with the other information we collect about audits, these stories will help us to present a complete picture to Congress and to CMS about what’s happening to HME businesses. For additional information, contact AAHomecare’s Kim Brummett at (202) 372-0750.
