Auditing Meaningful Use of your EHR System

Why Should You Attend:

Providers who receive an EHR incentive payment for either the Medicare or Medicaid EHR Incentive Program potentially may be subject to an audit. A provider’s failure to pass this audit will result in the forfeiture of significant funds received under the incentive program. It is imperative that a provider has the sufficient evidence and documentation to support its attestation of complying with the Meaningful Use standards.

A best practice to ensure this compliance is for the provider to conduct an internal audit of its Meaningful Use Attestation. This audit should be conducted each year that the attestation is submitted to CMS.

Attend this 90-minute webinar to learn how to properly conduct this audit, what documentation is required to support your attestation, and how to strengthen your process so that it may hold up under the scrutiny of an audit from CMS.

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• Learn how to conduct a self-audit of Meaningful Use of EHR
• Review an audit work plan that details the steps to be performed for this audit
• Understand what type of source documents need to be retained to support the attestation
• Determine the different types of documentation needed to support “percentage-based” and “non-percentage based” objectives
• Understand the impact of attestations for Stage 1 Objectives vs. Stage 2 Objectives
• Consideration for the need to assess the information security controls of your EHR
• How to prepare for a CMS audit of your EHR

Who Will Benefit:

This webinar will provide valuable assistance to key hospital and physician practice staff involved with the integrity of Medicare and Medicaid payments. Workforce personnel who should attend include:

• Compliance director
• Internal auditor
• CFO
• EHR coordinator
• Reimbursement accountant
• Chief information officer
• Health information manager
• Office manager

Instructor Profile:

Kevin McPoyle, CPA, is the director of internal audit and compliance with Kennedy Health System in New Jersey. He is a healthcare audit and compliance specialist with over 20 years’ experience assisting healthcare providers, both large and small, with developing systems to ensure compliance, revenue integrity, and operational efficiency. Mr. McPoyle has presented at numerous conferences and seminars and he is the past president of the Metropolitan Philadelphia Chapter of the Healthcare Financial Management Association where he led extensive efforts to design and deliver exceptional professional education for the industry.

Topic Background:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) created the EHR incentive programs for both Medicare and Medicaid to promote the use of EHR technology. EHR technology is a specific class of computerized records that store a patient’s treatment-related health information, such as diagnostic notes and procedure orders. Under this program medical providers who use EHR systems are eligible to receive a financial incentive payment once they are able to demonstrate that they can successfully use their system in a meaningful way to treat patients. Providers eligible to participate in this program include acute care hospitals, critical access hospitals, physicians, dentists, podiatrists, optometrists, and chiropractors. Standards to demonstrate that a system is being used in a meaningful way are defined by CMS. In May 2011 CMS began making Medicare EHR incentive payments and this program will continue through 2016. During the first year of the program CMS paid over $4 billion to 82,535 professionals and 1,474 hospitals. A physician can receive up to $44,000 in incentive payments over the duration of the program. A hospital can receive about $2 million per year under the program. In November 2012, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Health & Human Services released an audit report that identified that CMS was vulnerable to paying incentives to physicians and hospitals that do not fully meet the meaningful use requirements. In response to the audit, CMS started a program to audit Meaningful Use Attestations starting in 2013.

Follow us :