OIG identified massive overpayments for services rendered after patients' dates of death. Your urology practice should always be sure to record the correct date of service on your Medicare claims. Why? The OIG is tracking dates of service by investigating the date the patient passed away. In many cases, some practices are still charging for services long after their patients died, and it's costing the Medicare system millions. On Sept. 23, the OIG released the results of its audit, "Reviewof Medicare Parts A and B Services Billed With Dates of Service After Beneficiaries' Deaths," which revealed that CMS paid approximately $8.2 million in benefits for claims with dates of service after the beneficiaries' deaths. The OIG noted that Medicare will only pay for expenses "reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury or to improve the functioning of a malformed body member...because medically necessary items or services cannot be provided after beneficiaries' deaths, no items or services are allowable" thereafter. Correct Date of Service Is Imperative Although many practices might be surprised to find that they have made an error like this, the OIG found such problems with claims for over 69,000 deceased beneficiaries between Parts A and B over a two-year period. "It appears that the OIG was using Social Security records to determine the patients' dates of death, so it's unlikely that the date of death data was inaccurate -- and that leaves thepractice's service date as the inaccurate information," says Jay Neal, an Atlanta-based coding consultant. "This is less likely to happen with electronic health records because the date is usually already in the system on those, but on paper records, it can be a clerical error or just a matter of the person not being aware of the date," he says. The results: Protect Your Practice by Following This Advice Watch your date protocol: Neal says he has seen errors where practice employees misinterpret the dates that the physician writes down. "If the physician writes down '06-04-10,' he might mean June 4, 2010, whereas someone else might interpret that as April 6, 2010, because the date is written differently by different people." Advice: Follow through with other data: CMS Doesn't Dictate Date Annotation Currently, there are no Medicare standards indicating how you should indicate the date of service in your medical records. "Often, the fee slip is printed on the date of service, and thus, it would be typed right on the form," says Suzan Berman, CPC, CEMC, CEDC, senior manager of coding education and documentation compliance with the Physician Services Division at the UPMC in Pittsburgh, Penn. "If the physician is turning in rounding cards, he or she may want to write out the name of the month and then add the date of service." Suggestion: