Whether you’ve just completed your first submission to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), or you’ve had a transparency reporting program in place for years, it pays to take a look at your process to identify opportunities to increase efficiency and reduce risk.

Think back to the most recent reporting period and ask your compliance team these key questions:

Allocating Resources

  • How long before the reporting deadline did you begin to prepare for reporting?
  • How many departments/employees were involved in the reporting process—managing the project, preparing data, researching reporting requirements, filing, correcting errors, etc.?
  • How many person-hours did internal resources spend on the overall process?
  • What activities were placed on the back burner to meet the reporting deadline?
  • Did you have to use consultants to manage reporting? If so, at what cost?

Prior to your next reporting cycle, think about these questions and how you can be more efficient with collecting and validating data early to help minimize the strain on resources during the reporting period. Look at automation and operational efficiencies to help streamline data collection and reduce the amount of people involved with processing your data.

Preparing Data

  • How many different sources did you use for transactional data? And which of these sources was the most difficult to collect data from?
  • How much time was spent preparing data for import into the reporting system?
  • What percentage of your data had to be input manually?
  • What was your process for validating healthcare professional (HCP) details, such as National Provider Identifier (NPI) or state license numbers? How much time did it take?
  • How easy was it to remediate conflicting data from multiple data sources?
  • How did you ensure that you had all the data you needed to report?
  • How did you determine appropriate reportable spend? How did you differentiate what was reportable from what was not?
  • How do you import your product data into the reporting system?
  • Once you aggregated and validated your data, how confident were you in your readiness to report?
  • How do you envision the preparation process changing as your company grows?

Early analysis of the data in your source systems can help significantly reduce the time and energy it takes to prepare your data for reporting. Compare your data to previous years to help reduce the risk of missed data during reporting and review problematic data sources that may be prone to provide incomplete or invalid data.

Filing Reports

  • Were you able to file on time?
  • How many reports did you have to file?
  • CMS: General, Research and/or Physician Ownership?
    • US State reports: Connecticut, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Vermont?
    • International reports?
  • How easy was it to determine where and how to report?
  • How are you staying up to date with new reporting jurisdictions and changing reporting requirements?
  • How did you manage certification and attestation of your data prior to submission?
  • What issues did you encounter when you uploaded your data files to the CMS portal?
  • Were there common issues you could more easily resolve for next year?
  • Did you experience any reporting failures on the CMS portal?
  • What was your most frequent reporting error?
  • If your reporting failed, what did it take to correct the data before you could submit successfully?
  • Can you easily analyze your reporting data to assess and improve your compliance program?

Wherever possible, generate and run test reports into the CMS portal prior to your final submission. Do the hard work up front to allow you for more time to analyze your data during the busy reporting periods. It doesn’t have to be a struggle every year.

Many companies view compliance reporting as a challenge-ridden obligation that stresses their resources. Forward-thinking companies are discovering that an automated, cloud-based, end-to-end tool increases staff productivity and operational efficiency. What’s more, it also offers centralized access to global information, systematized processes to reduce risk, near real-time compliance monitoring and on-demand infrastructure scaling— bringing a whole new dimension of compliance. To learn more about how MediSpend solutions can help your organization, please contact us or call (888) 731-7322 x8300.

 

Bryan Stinehour | Lucas Croteau
Sr. Product Manager | Director, Client Services

May 19, 2020