The DME space is highly regulated, pushing surveyors to remember critical compliance requirements. The reason behind monitoring the quality of your HME/DME supplies is to continuously identify and address any company shortcomings you need to improve. Medicare demands constant reviews of specific areas. Within those areas, select those that are the most appropriate and beneficial to your organization.
What Medicare Areas To Review?
You can analyze the importance of each area you choose if you select the five areas Medicare expects you to review and split them into smaller chunks. These areas include:
Patient satisfaction with products and services/complaints and concerns
Information for this requirement gets recorded on complaint forms. For each Medicare patient, you must record your Medicare HIC number, a memo of the investigation findings, and a 14-day response window on the form.
Response rapidly to the patient’s queries, problems, and issues
Most companies recognize this area as an incident report. Responding to issues in a timely manner promotes customer loyalty, reducing the probability of customer switching. Always ensure that the information you capture is recorded, including the date, the person who made contact with you, your follow-up routes, and the final resolution for the issue.
The effect of supplier’s business processes on patient access to items, equipment, services, and information
This area has a wide range of indicators. Some surveyors keep tabs on after-hour calls to ensure the patient’s concerns are addressed adequately and on time. Some organizations may track a business’ agenda, such as operating hours and “after 5 pm” arrangements.
You may change the delivery personnel or service technician’s work hours to lower the overtime money expended on late arrangements. Always keep records to double-check your findings.
Billing and coding error frequency
These errors include the number of Medicare claims refuted or errors the supplier discovers in their records after the notification of the claim’s rejection. The review focuses on billing, coding, and other financial subjects.
Most companies analyze their billing methods, ways to minimize errors, and training modes for staff committing mistakes in billing and collecting.
Undesirable patient events due to service insufficiency or equipment/item malfunction
In adverse patient events such as accidents, injuries, symptoms, infections, and hospitalizations, it is crucial to confer regularly with the prescribing physician, healthcare team members, patients, and guardians who classify the situation.
Your contract should clearly describe what qualifies as an adverse event. There are also timeframes for reporting this occurrence. Maintain an agenda for the timeframes and contact people, including the manufacturer, your attorney, and your insurance agency.
Automate Your Operations with NikoHealth
If the product quality depends on the expertise of the manufacturers, then the service you provide highly depends on the level of control you have over your DME supply cycle. Resolve the frequency of billing coding errors, claims management, rental analysis, training, order management, and many other issues by streamlining all operations with a modern software solution.
Automation reduces human errors and takes your patient experience to the next level. NikoHealth is a new-age cloud-based solution that meets all legislative and business requirements. We perform state-of-the-art inventory management and tracking of all your DME orders. Contact us today for simplified, data-driven insights into your DME inventory.
Abby Rapcienski">
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