CMS Begins DMEPOS Fraud Demonstration Project – Are You a Targeted Supplier?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) instructed the National Supplier Clearinghouse (NSC) to begin the DMEPOS demonstration project on November 1. This demonstration project involves all DMEPOS suppliers located in the following counties:

South Florida – Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach

Southern California – Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino

Each DMEPOS supplier in the demonstration locales is required to submit a CMS 855S Medicare enrollment application to the NSC within 30 days after the NSC requests such data.

For mdditional information, visit http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicareProviderSupEnroll

Watch Out for Medicare Fraud Strike Force

The Medicare Fraud Strike Force is a multi-agency team of investigators that identifies potential fraud cases through real-time analysis of billing data from the Medicare Program Safeguard Contractors and Health Care Information System claims data. It is part of a multi-phase enforcement and regulatory effort to "improve the quality of the industry and reduce the potential for fraud," according to the Department of Justice.

No Rush to Accredit Says CMS's Bastinelli

After release of its supplier quality standards in August 2006, CMS named 11 approved accrediting organizations late last year to enforce them. A merger in January between two of the organizations left 10 accreditors ready to deal with what many had expected to be an accreditation rush in the initial competitive bidding areas.

But, the rush never came. CMS's Sandra Bastinelli, charged with running the accreditation program, announced at an Oct. 11 meeting of the Program Advisory and Oversight Committee that a total 2,200 provider locations across the 10 CBAs had been accredited. About 100 more applications were pending before the Oct. 31 deadline.