AEP is madness for Medicare Advantage and Supplement Providers. There is a massive influx of questions and inquiries from potential customers as well as current customers looking to better understand their benefits and costs.
If ever there was a time for the expression “All hands-on deck,” AEP is it.
Providers must staff up to ensure they can meet the volume of inquiries but also must ensure that their employees, however new to the frontline they are, remain compliant with the strict regulations imposed by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
There are all types of touchpoints to monitor, ranging from phone calls to events and even appointments. And each touchpoint is a potential violation, one that can lead to fines and even loss of contract.
There is a way, of course, to cut down on the stresses of AEP madness, and that has everything to do with preparation.
Rather than throw a frontline salesforce into the perfect storm that is AEP and seeing if they sink or swim, it is better to institute a yearlong CMS Compliance Monitoring program. These programs help teams build the reporting relationships and infrastructure to support a massive expansion during AEP.
Leadership can be trained on how to make small scale corrective actions for minor violations so that, amid AEP primetime, everything runs as it should.
A year-round AEP monitoring program also documents a company’s continued compliance efforts, meaning that if they are caught in violation during AEP, they can point to their year-round CMS monitoring program as evidence of their due diligence.
Finally, a year-round CMS Compliance program gives companies access to untold reams of data. What types of violations are most common, and are any more common in a particular call center, for example?
TrendSource has long helped companies monitor and document their CMS compliance efforts, both during AEP and beyond.
TrendSource does not just have the operational experience and infrastructure to execute thousands upon thousands of CMS audits, we’re also CMS compliance experts. We help companies craft custom CMS monitoring programs, ensuring they are asking the right questions and following industry best practices.