As we continue through the Medicare’s Annual Election Period (AEP), consumers are engaging Medicare Supplement Providers at multiple sales touchpoints, including phone calls, informal and formal events, and even 1:1 appointments.
For Supplement Providers and their sales forces, it’s the busiest time of year, amounting to Black Friday levels of traffic for several sustained weeks. During AEP, the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) stringently monitors the interactions Supplement Providers are having with consumers, ensuring these interactions do not stray outside the boundaries CMS regulations have clearly marked. When companies cross these boundaries, CMS takes punitive action, meaning consumer-facing employees must be vigilant.
This is a tall order for these frontline employees and the companies they represent—think about it: Sales Reps face their most intense scrutiny during the busiest time of their year.
It’s like asking a quarterback to throw their best ball while facing an all-out blitz.
Year-Round CMS Compliance Audits Prepare Reps for the AEP Rush
This is why TrendSource encourages its Medicare Supplement Provider clients to run year-round CMS Compliance programs: They help prepare sales reps for AEP, during which time they will face increased volume and increased scrutiny.
Companies can institute small scale corrective actions throughout the year to ensure their salesforce follows best practices and stays on the right side of CMS regulations.
Year-round CMS Compliance programs also help companies build out the appropriate communication channels and patterns to quickly respond to the violations a CMS monitoring program reports. This helps companies ensure they are agile and thorough in their internal responses, particularly training once a violation is reported. Such a robust system supports new Sales Reps hired for AEP, who may not benefit from year-round monitoring but will enjoy the safety net this infrastructure provides.
TrendSource CMS Compliance Audits: AEP and Beyond!
It is absolutely imperative that insurance companies selling Medicare supplement packages run CMS Compliance Audits throughout AEP. We talk about this all the time, and we will talk about it again, so sorry if that gets annoying.
But today, we’re talking about year-round CMS Compliance Audits, which, while not absolutely mandatory, definitely gives companies a compliance edge, ensuring their sales reps and the structures supporting them are prepared for the AEP onslaught.
TrendSource is a premier provider of CMS Compliance Audits, both during AEP and year-round.
Whether it’s phone call audits, informal and formal event audits, or 1:1 appointment audits, TrendSource has the flexibility and experience to develop the right CMS program for any Supplement Provider.
