Home Forums Discussions Meaningful Use Meaningful Use AUDIT

Well surprise, surprise, it did happen. I only attested once to stage 1 in 2012, and have been subjected to an audit. They can, and will, audit you up to 7 years after you attest. Despite the upcoming demise of MU, the Feds want their money back. You may get something like this in your email:

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You have been selected by CMS for a HITECH EHR Meaningful Use Audit for payment year 1. We are the CMS Contractor authorized to perform the audit.

Please confirm your receipt of this e-mail. Also, please confirm whether you will be the contact person for this audit. If you will be the contact person, please supply your preferred contact information for future correspondence. If you are not the contact person for this audit, please advise us who at your facility is the correct contact person and furnish their e-mail address.

I am the assigned auditor. The attached documentation addresses most of the questions you may have. Please consult it thoroughly before contacting me. If you still have questions that need to be addressed, I can be reached via email at xxxx@xxxxxxxxx.com.

Please see the attached documents and submit all requested information by xx/xx/xxxx. You may submit documentation by mail or by uploading via our secure file sharing utility. Please clearly identify the Eligible Professional's NPI on each document uploaded. Please click on the link labelled 'Click Here' at the bottom of this email to begin the upload process. I will be automatically notified when your upload has been completed. As such, there is no need to contact me for confirmation that I have received your documentation.

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Well, it took me about 2 days of work to respond to this. I went back into my old files and could hardly remember what we had done. The papers required were scattered into various folders. I had to get letters from the state attesting that we did not have secure exchanges at the time, from the vaccine administration, and so on. If you have attested, I suggest you have everything ready for an audit, because it will probably happen. The biggest sticking point, from what I've been told, is that many practices did not get the Security Risk Analysis done. If you didn't do this, get ready to scrape back together 17,000 dollars, or whatever the payout was. Thankfully, the work paid off and I got this:

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"We performed a review of your meaningful use attestation for the Program Year 2012 and Payment Year 1. Based on our review of the supporting documentation furnished by you, we have determined that you have met the meaningful use criteria."

Please also note that this audit does not preclude you from future, prior or subsequent year audits.

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That's okay, I don't intend to EVER get involved with you in such a program again!

Hooray for you Chris
Guess Unk Sam will will have to build a better mousetrap
Never did like the government cheese anyway

Hello Chris,
can you clarify what you mean by 'secure exchanges '
I do have a letter from my state stating they did not have a vaccine registry that could communicate with AC but I do not understand the secure exchanges .
also did they accept the report generated by AC or did you have to provide them raw data ?
thanks
Bala

The key thing was having the original report generated by AC: took a while to find! Also, having the security analysis done and I made a list of office policies concerning security to address each of the points brought up in the analysis. We had to successfully exchange vaccine data and also exchange medical records with another provider. I have a letter from the Alaska eHealth Network stating that there was no way to exchange vaccine data (back in 2012) and also that there was no way to exchange health surveillance data with the state. (There still is no way to do this.) I had a printout from the medical record exchange with another practice through the eHealth network, encrypted.

Anyone seeking to do MU, I recommend you save yourself the hassle and focus on seeing patients!

What a circle jerk
They get paid for the work you do for free.
That is what is happening in all of medicine. The hospitalists get paid for the call time we used to give for free, for example.
And so far as I can tell, those absolutely wretched EMR's the hospitals and big organizations use never get audited -- even though they overcode like crazy, and produce completely useless notes and reports.

thanks Chris , congrats on successfully passing the audit.
Unfortunately, I did the security analysis myself so will have to see if I pass muster.
If I could have any professional do the risk assessment I would but cant turn the clock back now !
thanks for all your help
bala

I am very happy to report that I was notified yesterday that I passed my 2015 attestation period, year 4 meaningless use prepayment audit. I am very happy about this. I was going to contact my congressman if I did not get it. It was not a huge amount of work but it did feel like being accused of a crime and I kind of felt that the auditors didn't recognize what it was they were auditing. It seems strange that accountants are not auditing accounts but auditing medical record data and security info. They were polite and respectful and I responded to each request although I wanted to just give up but I'll be damned if I was going to let them keep my hard earned meaningless use $$.

I know nobody really cares about meaningless use because its so meaningless but I passed and hope the money shows up soon cause I really need it
nancy

Congrats on passing! Now we need to get ready for Hillary Care rebooted or Trump Care, the GOLD plan.