When hospitals attest to Meaningful Use compliance, the stakes are high. As blogger Jim Tate points out, a 30-bed hospital might receive $1M plus in incentives for meeting MU criteria in 2011, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
Unfortunately, some facilities are facing CMS audits, both pre-payment and post-payment, to verify that they actually met Meaningful Use criteria. So many audit notices have gone out that Tate has dubbed this the Summer of EHR Incentive Audits.
Perhaps the toughest challenge for many providers is having to defend what they did in 2011, Tate notes:
[Responding to such audits] can be tough because back in those pre-historic days there were giant knowledge gaps, abundant mis-information, and a sense the incentives might disappear so it was best to move fast and worry later.
It’s critical for hospitals to pass their audit nonetheless. If not, Tate notes, they’ll get a letter demanding that the facility repay the entire incentive within just a few weeks. And that, as Tate accurately points out, could be catastrophic.
Tate, not surprisingly, has something to sell here. He heads a consulting firm, EMR Advocate, which among other things helps eligible professionals and hospitals address Meaningful Use compliance and concerns.
But I have no doubt that he’s telling the truth about the upsurge in audits; after all, it was just a matter of time before they started to happen.
If you’re not prepared to defend your attestation, now is the time to review what you did and see if you can manage to address any gaps in documentation or otherwise sloppy paperwork. You don’t want to be caught completely unprepared by an auditor.
