Reminders from the CERT Documentation Contractor
September 30, 2009Livanta, the CERT Documentation Contractor (CDC) had asked contractors to educate their provider community on the following items:
- The CDC is encouraging providers who have voluminous pages of medical records to submit medical records electronically via CDs either in .pdf or .tif format. To protect the electronic records please encrypt the CD and provide instructions on how the CDC can obtain the password. By submitting records electronically, providers can save money in copying and postage as well as reduce the turnaround time of receipt. The CDC introduced this method of submitting records in the September 2008 Newsletter found under the following link: https://www.certcdc.com/certproviderportal/pages/newsletters/879September 2008.pdf
- Recently the provider community was notified of a Medicare scam. The CDC has noted that because of this recent scam, some providers are reluctant to send the requested medical records to the CDC which is causing an increase in non-responder CERT claim errors. The CERT program is an official program on behalf of CMS and has the authority to verify billing information. Please be sure to provide all the requested medical records to the CDC upon their request to prevent recoupment of the claim payment.