Simple Medicare Enrollment through PECOS

How many of you see Medicare patients, or have staff that see Medicare patients? If you raised your hand, I have the hottest tip for you that you most likely did not know existed.

PECOS (Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System) is used for many purposes, but were you aware that you could enroll your clinical staff through PECOS and avoid all of Medicare's revalidation request for information (RFI), payment delays, and headaches? It's true! If your practice has to go through a Medicare revalidation or enrollment process for new or existing staff members, you can now get this process completed within about three weeks! Yes, three weeks. If you have just hired a new clinical staff member with an existing Medicare ID number, this time will be cut nearly in half.

Do you know who the contact person is for Medicare at your practice? You should find out today. If Medicare is sending correspondence to an invalid e-mail address, you have put your practice in extreme danger of having its contract terminated for not going through the revalidation process. This could mean a loss of revenue and could potentially cause you to close your practice.

Most of you are probably still calling into Medicare or your Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) and getting the run around, with the enrollment process taking 60 days to 90 days. All the while, your clinical staff have to be sure they are following very specific guidelines if a senior staff member is going to be signing off on visit notes. This can cost you considerable delays in payment that are now unnecessary if you enroll using PECOS.

The process is so simple, I really hope you check this out and give it a shot. We just went through a very painful, but educational, process with revalidation and found someone at our MAC who genuinely wanted to help us. She informed us of the PECOS system and how quickly and easily we could enroll and validate our staff.

You can go to the PECOS website and sign your staff up. They will get an e-mail from the system letting them know they have been enrolled. This is where you will be able to go through the entire application process and provide all of the required information, paperwork (it allows for attachments), and requirements necessary for Medicare to get your staff enrolled. If there is incorrect or missing information, the application will not prompt you to go back and fix the errors in real time - not in 30 days when someone at Medicare can get around to it.

This is such an easy, efficient, and effective way to move through what has always been such a painful process for everyone! When you are ready to enroll or revalidate your staff in Medicare, be sure you have all of the necessary information and use the online system, your bank account and staff members will thank you.