One-on-one MSP training prepares staff for audit
One-on-one MSP training prepares staff for audit
When Providence Milwaukee, a suburban Portland, OR, hospital that’s part of Providence Health System, was notified that its Medicare secondary payer (MSP) process would be audited by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), access services and training staff went into high gear.
In preparation for the audit — for which the facility received two months’ notice — members of the system’s regional quality assurance (QA) and training staff went to the targeted hospital and worked closely with access employees, says Kellie Friderick, QA and training analyst.
Analysts manually audited the MSP page for every Medicare patient that came through the hospital during a three-week period, Friderick says, and gave feedback on each account to Patricia Weygandt, the on-site access manager.
"Every day, we would get e-mail from the [internal] auditor outlining MSP errors," Weygandt explains. "I would look up each [account], go to the individual registrar, and walk through the process. Because it was so fresh — work from the day before — we could talk about what their thinking had been, why they had done what they had done. It was very helpful."
Two days before the actual HCFA audit, Weygandt says, a special session was held with staff who would be working that day. "They would draw a number that signified a particular patient scenario and, in a group setting, sit at the computer and go through the interview." Then the group would discuss that registrar’s choices, Weygandt adds.
In other session, Friderick notes, "We demonstrated how to ask the questions and how to phrase them to get the optimum information from the patient."
As part of the preparation, Friderick says, trainers made sure employees were very clear on the meaning and purpose of each MSP question. "We talked about the expectation if the auditor were to sit down with them and ask questions and tried to make them as comfortable as we could."
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