ATLANTA--With the passage of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008, accreditation deadlines for round two of competitive bidding have been discarded, but CMS' DMEPOS accrediting bodies are still rallying behind the cry: “Don't wait! Apply now!”
Tom Cesar, president of the Accreditation Commission for Health Care, one of CMS' 10 approved accreditors, said his organization has no intention of slowing its push toward the still-in-effect universal accreditation deadline of Sept. 30, 2009.
“We're not changing our dates,” Cesar said. “We have too many companies coming in to put them off. We want to go ahead with the process. Just because competitive bidding has been put off, the Sept. 30 [2009] deadline stands. We don't want to have a bottleneck at the last minute.”
Had the bidding program not been delayed, providers participating in round two would have had to apply for accreditation by July 21 in order to submit a bid, and would have had to be accredited by Jan. 14, 2009, in order to be considered for a contract. (See HomeCare Monday, July 21.)
According to Sherry Hedrick, director of clinical compliance and accreditation for ACHC, “We actually planned ahead and set our own deadline for applicants to submit their applications. Our deadline [to submit for round two] was June 30.
“We did this,” Hedrick continued, “because a lot of providers don't understand what all is involved in getting accredited. They have quite a bit of information they have to send in to us. All of that has to be reviewed and then a contract signed before a company can be considered 'in process.'” (The application process varies among accrediting bodies.)
Hedrick noted the application response ACHC saw before dismissal of the round two deadlines was particularly heavy. “We were quite busy prior to [the deadline drop]. During the month of May, we received more applications than we did in all of 2004,” she noted, adding that accreditation applications had increased among providers both in and out of the 70 round two MSAs.
“Obviously [applications from those] MSAs were a greater percentage, but we did see and continue to see applications from outside the MSAs,” she said.
But in a competitive bidding area or not, Hedrick said ACHC's advice to providers remains the same: “The most important thing we keep emphasizing is that mandatory accreditation is a totally different thing from competitive bidding. Mandatory accreditation is not going away. Start preparing now. Don't wait until the last minute.”
Sandra Canally, president of accrediting body The Compliance Team, echoed Hedrick's advice: “Talk to the accreditors. Choose what is right for your organization. Come forward. Do it now.”
Like ACHC, Canally said her organization saw an influx of providers seeking accreditation while the round two deadlines remained in place. But now that they have been dropped, the number of providers applying “certainly has died down. We have seen a real decrease. Everyone has put on the brakes,” she said. “Even though the September [2009] deadline stands, providers seem to be thinking that since competitive bidding has been pushed back, maybe this deadline will be, too.”
Canally said The Compliance Team has seen a decrease of at least 50 percent in appplications since competitive bidding was delayed.
The reaction is exactly what industry stakeholders feared might happen.
Last week, the American Association for Homecare said the organization “opposes the cancellation of accreditation deadlines that had been in effect” for round two of the bidding program. “The home medic
al equipment industry has advocated accreditation of home care providers for three decades because accreditation can serve as a powerful tool in preventing fraud and raising standards for this important sector of the nation's health care system,” said AAHomecare President and CEO Tyler Wilson. “We are surprised that CMS would argue against the reforms and delay enacted by Congress in the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA) by stating that MIPPA delays accreditation--and then cancel the accreditation deadlines it had already set for providers in 70 metropolitan areas.
“We do not favor government delays to the accreditation requirement. Accreditation for this industry is already 30 years overdue,” Wilson continued. “If the federal government wants to get serious about preventing fraud, it should use tools like accreditation more aggressively and use its ample, existing authority much more effectively.”
AAHomecare pointed out the new Medicare law does close a loophole that had allowed non-accredited providers to serve Medicare beneficiaries under subcontracting arrangements. Under MIPPA, all DMEPOS suppliers, whether they are billing Medicare directly or are a subcontractor to another supplier, must be accredited.
CMS has also been beating the “get accredited” drum, hosting a series of accreditation teleconferences to answer questions about the process. In a conference call July 15, CMS' Sandra Bastinelli reminded listeners of the Sept. 30, 2009, all-provider deadline.
By that date, Bastinelli said, “all DMEPOS suppliers must comply with quality standards--and that means to be accredited--in order to retain or obtain a Medicare Part B payment for DMEPOS.”