Strategies for increasing revenue and litigating on behalf of clients.
There are two ways to increase revenue merely by ensuring that your patients’ rights are met. We talk about providers being audited for their claims being regulatory compliant, but how about self-audits to increase your revenue? I like these kinds of audits! I am calling these audits “Reverse RAC audits.” Let’s bring money in instead of reimbursements recouped.
You can protect yourself as a provider and increase revenue by remembering and litigating on behalf of your consumers’ rights. Plus, your patients will be eternally grateful for your advocacy. It is a win/win. The following are two, distinct ways to increase revenue and protect your consumers’ rights:
- Ensuring freedom of choice of provider; and
- Appealing denials on behalf of your consumers.
Freedom of Choice of Provider
In a federal case in Indiana, we won an injunction based on the patients’ rights to access to care.
42 CFR § 431.51 – Free choice of providers states that “(b) State plan requirements. A State plan must provide as follows…:
(1) A beneficiary may obtain Medicaid services from any institution, agency, pharmacy, person, or organization that is –
(i) Qualified to furnish the services; and
(ii) Willing to furnish them to that beneficiary.
In Bader v. Wernert, MD, we successfully obtained an injunction enjoining the State of Indiana from terminating a health care facility. We sued on behalf of a geneticist – Dr. Bader – whose facility’s contract was terminated from the Medicaid program for cause. We sued Dr. Wernert in his official capacity as Secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration. Through litigation, we saved the facility’s Medicaid contract from being terminated based on the rights of the consumers. The consumers’ rights can come to the aid of the provider.
Appealing Consumers’ Denials
This is kind of a reverse RAC Audit. This is an easy way to increase revenue.
Under 42 CFR § 405.910 – Appointed representatives, a provider of services may appeal on behalf of the consumers. If you appeal on behalf of your consumers, the obvious benefit is that you could get reimbursed for the services rendered that were denied. You cannot charge a fee for the service; however, so please keep this in mind.
One of my clients currently has hired my team appealing all denials that are still viable under the statute of limitations. There are literally hundreds of denials.
Over the past few years, they had hundreds of consumers’ coverage get denied for one reason or the other. Allegedly not medically necessary or provider’s trainings weren’t conveyed to the auditors. In other words, most of the denials are egregiously wrong. Others are closer to call. Regardless these funds were all a huge lump of accounts’ receivables that was weighing down the accounting books.
Now, with the help of my team, little by little, claim by claim, we are chipping away at that accounts’ receivables. The receivables are decreasing just by appealing the consumers’ denials.
Programming Note: Listen to healthcare attorney Knicole Emanuel’s RAC Report every Monday during Monitor Mondays, 10 Eastern.
