If you have applied for a Meaningful Use grant in the past this is a crucial read.

When applying for your grant, you were asked to provide a contact email address for any communication between your business and Medicare. As you may be aware, there are random audits currently being conducted on practices who have received grant dollars to help with their transition to Electronic Health Records. While everyone believes they are in compliance with the policies put in place for Meaningful Use, the fact is, many practices are not.

If you have applied for a Meaningful Use grant in the past this is a crucial read.

When applying for your grant, you were asked to provide a contact email address for any communication between your business and Medicare. As you may be aware, there are random audits currently being conducted on practices who have received grant dollars to help with their transition to Electronic Health Records. While everyone believes they are in compliance with the policies put in place for Meaningful Use, the fact is, many practices are not.

Here is the important part, if you are not in compliance and you are audited, you will receive an email notification from the consulting firm retained by Medicare who is conducting the audit. This email is being sent to the email address you provided in your original grant application. If that email address is no longer valid, was a previous employee, or currently not regularly checked, this could be detrimental. In the email you are allotted 30 days to respond to provide proof that you were in compliance. If you do not respond within 30 days, your practice will be facing a penalty of up to $30,000 per doctor!

At this point, your only option is to request consideration for a hardship and to negotiate a timeframe to pay penalties.

United Physician Services (UPS) offers services to help you navigate through this process.

• Working with the auditing consulting group to identify the specific areas they indicate the practice did not meet the Meaningful Use criteria.
• Coordinating and presenting the proof of compliance, if applicable.
• Providing insight & expertise to minimize penalties you could be facing.
• Meeting the Medicare hardship criteria and negotiating your hardship payment plan with Medicare.

While our desire is for everyone to be compliant, we know there can be mistakes made. Below we’ve listed a few recommendations to take immediately:

• It is UPS’s recommendation that you review your application for Meaningful Use and find which email address was used. If the email is not the owner of the business, contact Medicare to update the email address.
• Ensure that on ANY government or health plan document be sure to use the business owner’s email information for electronic notifications.

Contact UPS if you have any issues related to your Meaningful Use, you will be glad you did.