Anesthesia Industry eAlerts
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Anesthesia Providers: Make Sure You Continue to Revalidate Your Medicare Enrollment When Medicare Asks
September 4, 2013
Anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists and anesthesiologist assistants who last validated their enrollment in Medicare prior to March 25, 2011 are going to have to revalidate again by March 23, 2015. This is an update to the previously communicated timeframe of March 23, 2013.
The revalidation is required under Section 6041(a) of the Affordable Care Act. According to this statutory provision, all providers and suppliers who were initially enrolled before March 25, 2011 and have not revalidated since then must revalidate their enrollment information within 60 days of receiving notice from their carriers, but no later than March 23, 2015. Our August 22nd, 2011 Alert shared more insight behind this hassle for providers.
Nevertheless, revalidation has been and will be burdensome, especially to larger anesthesia practices that will have to revalidate many providers. The mere fact that practices cannot plan on when to apply for revalidation, because they must wait until they receive a notice from their Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) any time up to March 23, 2015, is a burden.
Pending the arrival of the notices from your own MACs, be aware of the following:
- You have 60 days from the date of the revalidation request letter to submit complete enrollment forms. Do not try to start the process before you hear from your MAC. You can assist in the process by returning all applications forwarded from ABC with the requested information as soon as possible. Again, we have 60 days from the date of the notice from Medicare to respond.
- Failure to comply may result in the deactivation of your Medicare billing privileges and a freeze on payments.
- You may revalidate using either the Provider Enrollment Chain Ownership System (PECOS) website or a paper CMS-855 application.
- The application must be complete and contain your entire enrollment data.
- Remember to send in your supporting documentation, e.g., IRS form CP-575 showing your employer identification number.
- If you use the online PECOS system, be sure to mail in the signed certification statement within seven days.
As always, ABC will work with our clients to respond to the MACs’ revalidation requests. We hope that the information we have provided is helpful to all our subscribers.
With best wishes,
Tony Mira
President and CEO
