UN-ANNOUNCED INSPECTIONS REQUIRED FOR ACCREDITED CLINICS
Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA) requires accreditation of all providers of CT, MRI, breast MRI, nuclear medicine, and PET exams that bill under Part B of the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule by Jan. 1, 2012. This is needed in order to receive payment for the technical component of these services. Currently, CMS/MIPPA mandates apply to outpatient facilities only and do not apply to hospitals. However, many hospitals are seeking accreditation via ACR and IAC Nuclear/PET for their radiology departments, in addition to the Joint Commission Accreditation status that is commonly held. Feedback received by AMP indicates hospitals feel the latter two accreditation agencies provide more structured guidelines to follow than are available otherwise and may prepare them for a smoother transition to stiffer compliance requirements in the future.
Starting in January 2012 CMS/MIPPA requires unannounced site surveys within the three year accreditation cycle to validate compliance with accreditation criteria. The ACR strongly advises their accredited sites use suggested documents to gather and organize their information for these site surveys. This can be reviewed at: http://www.acr.org/accreditation/Toolkit-Practice-Sites.aspx.
Similarily, IAC Nuclear/PET recommends for their accredited facilities that they review a check list to prepare for their unannounced inspections. Information on this can be found at: http://www.intersocietal.org/nuclear
It would be good to review the status of your accredited facility. AMP is finding that many programs are lax on ensuring they are keeping the commitments they made in their application for accreditation.
AMP can assist you with this task with one of several programs we offer just for this purpose. AMP offers assistance for ACR and IAC Nuclear/PET initial accreditation, re-accreditation and on-going maintenance programs. Feel free to contact our office for more information.