MDS Alert

You’ll Soon Have An Extra 15 Days To Respond To ADRs

Good news: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is giving you some extra time to produce a pre-payment review Additional Documentation Request (ADR) response.

Instead of the current 30-day time limit to respond to prepayment review ADRs, you’ll have 45 days beginning in April 2015. CMS announced this change in a Nov. 14 transmittal (Change Request 8583), which it revised and reissued on Jan. 7, 2015.

The CMS transmittal instructs Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) and Zone Program Integrity Contractors (ZPICs) to change their prepayment review ADRs so that they state providers and suppliers have 45 days to respond to an ADR. For the Prepayment Review Time Frames, the transmittal states:

“When requesting documentation for prepayment review, the MAC and ZPIC shall notify providers that the requested documentation is to be submitted within 45 calendar days of the request. The reviewer should not grant extensions to providers who need more time to comply with the request. Reviewers shall deny claims for which the requested documentation was not received by day 46.”

The effective date for this change is April 1, 2015, with an implementation date of April 6, 2015.

You can read the transmittal at www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Guidance/Transmittals/Downloads/R554PI.pdf. The accompanying Medicare Learning Network Matters article is at www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Medicare-Learning-Network-MLN/MLNMattersArticles/Downloads/MM8583.pdf.  

Get Your Residents ‘Tweeting’ To Improve Their Cognitive Capacity

Want to help your elderly residents to improve their overall mental health and well-being? Social media could be the cure.

Training older adults to use social media improves cognitive capacity and increases their sense of self-competence, according to a two-year study by the University of Exeter and funded by the European Union. The study is part of an international project called “Ages 2.0.” The researchers gave a group of vulnerable older adults a specially-designed computer, broadband connection and training in how to use them.

The study participants especially enjoyed connecting with friends and family via email and Skype, according to a recent university press release. Those who received training became more positive about computers over time.

The researchers discovered that those older adults who received training had increased feelings of self-competence, engaged more in social activity, had a stronger sense of personal identity, and showed improved cognitive capacity. The university surmised that these factors led to overall better mental health and well-being.

Social connections are crucial to cognitive and physical health, and “people who are socially isolated or who experience loneliness are more vulnerable to disease and decline,” U.K.-based project leader Dr. Thomas Morton of the university’s Psychology department said in a recent statement. 

“For these reasons, finding ways to support people’s social connections is a really important goal,” Morton noted. “This study shows how technology can be a useful tool for enabling social connections, and that supporting older people in our community to use technology effectively can have important benefits for their health and well-being.”

For more on the study, go to www.ages2.eu/en.