Hayes Review: Fall 2009

Note from Pete

By Pete Butler

Pete Butler Happy fall, everyone. My kids are still young enough to be excited to be back in school. Many of my colleagues here at Hayes are emptying their nests as another son or daughter enters college. I feel a bit like a student myself these days. My current lesson is RAC auditing and how our new MDaudit Hospital is designed to help our hospital clients not only mitigate their compliance risk but also prepare for the RAC audits. My teachers have been our development partners:

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Loma Linda University
University of Missouri Health Care

I would like to publicly thank them for their time and forward-thinking contributions to MDaudit Hospital’s design and functionality.

There is such a demand for RAC support that a plethora of RAC tracking tools are available on the market. The difference with MDaudit Hospital is that it helps you get in front of the audit and be proactive vs. simply tracking the audit once the RACs appear on the scene.

Like MDaudit Professional for physician practices, MDaudit Hospital automates much of the administrative aspects of the billing audit, which allows you to perform far more audits with the same staff. You can drill down to the provider level to prioritize your physician training efforts, which is the key to improving the entire “clean claims” process.

You can also quickly assess your exposure on the RAC audit areas, like debridement, for example. And, MDaudit Hospital gives you quick access to your findings, which you can then compare to RAC findings and determine whether you want to appeal.

Many organizations are conducting self-audits before the RACs come and paying on what they find. This proactivity is keeping many of them from being audited by RAC. MDaudit Hospital allows you to perform internal audits so that you are not surprised by anything the RACs may find. This is probably the best benefit to MDaudit Hospital – it takes the surprise and the stress regarding the unknown out of the equation and puts you in control.

Please read more about MDaudit and ask Robert Freedman (Eastern region) or Doug Murray (Midwest and West) to show you a demonstration.

Enjoy the rest of the season, and please feel free to contact me – I would enjoy hearing from you.