As carriers ramp up their audit activities, the chance that a physician will receive a request for documentation increases. A provider who doesn’t send the required paperwork on time gets dinged with a denial for that service.
However, auditors will make allowances for extenuating circumstance such as the one noted on
WPS’ CERT Report page: “Received note indicating provider was deceased and medical records were not accessible.”
(Here at
DecisionHealth, we’re familiar with the tenacity of auditors, so we couldn’t help but wonder if WPS’ CERT team checked.)
We’re being a bit whimsical, you might even say we’re whistling past the graveyard. But this does drive home how important it is to meet that documentation request deadline. When you can’t, make sure the auditor knows why as soon as possible. How do we know all of this? We read
Medical Practice Compliance Alert, which provides the latest coverage on audit risks and how to mitigate them, and it is written specifically for medical practices.