Correct Date of Service is Imperative

OIG released the results of its audit 'Review of Medicare Parts A and B Services Billed With Dates of Service After Beneficiaries' Deaths

On September 23 this year, the OIG released the results of its audit 'Review of Medicare Parts A and B Services Billed With Dates of Service After Beneficiaries' Deaths', which revealed that CMS paid approximately $8.2 million in benefits for claims with dates of service after the beneficiaries' deaths.

The OIG noted that Medicare will only shell out money for expenses 'reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury or to improve the functioning of a malformed body member as medically necessary items or services can't be provided after beneficiaries'deaths, no items or services are allowable' thereafter.

Since the OIG is tracking dates of service by investigating the date the patient passed away, you should make it a point to ensure your ob-gyn practice records the correct date of service (DOS) on your Medicare claims. In many instances, some practices are still charging for services long after their patients died, and it is costing the Medicare system big money.

Correct date of service is very important : Even though many practices might be surprised to find that they've made a mistake like this, the OIG found some problems with claims for over 69,000 deceased beneficiaries between Parts A and B over a two-year period.

Safeguard your practice by following this advice

Watch your date protocol: Sometimes there are errors where practice employees misinterpret the dates that the physician writes down. If the physician notes down '06-04-10,' he might mean June 4, 2010, while someone else might interpret that as April 6, 2010 as the date is written differently by different people."

Advice: If you enter the DOS into the patient's claim form manually, be sure and have a uniform way of writing the date at your practice, between all providers and back office staff members. To add to it, you should cross-reference the DOS against the records for all deceased patients to ensure that you have recorded all dates correctly.

Follow through with other data: If you are making errors on deceased patients' records, it is likely that you have also applied the wrong date on other patients' claims as well. Ensure that everyone in your practice is using the same criteria to apply DOS. If some doctors still write the date with the numbers for the month and year transposed, it might be a good idea to ask all the practitioners to begin writing out the month instead. For example, instead of 06-04-10, you might have to ask everyone to start writing out June 4, 2010.

For more tips on ways to write the correct DOS and for other medical coding news pertaining to this, sign up for a medical coding guide like http://www.supercoder.com/