A new CMS survey reveals provider directories for private Medicare Advantage plans are often incorrect, reports Kaiser Health News.
Agency officials said they found inaccurate information for nearly half of the 5,832 physicians listed in online directories for 54 Medicare Advantage plans checked last fall, according to the article.
CMS' results were made public Monday amid Medicare open enrollment for 2017, which runs from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7.
For the survey, CMS called 108 physicians representing primary care, cardiology, ophthalmology and oncology for the Medicare Advantage companies. CMS did not identify names of the insurers surveyed, according to the report.
The agency found most error-prone listings involved physicians with multiple offices that did not serve health plan members at each location, Christine Reinhard, a health insurance specialist in the CMS division of surveillance, compliance and marketing, said in the report. Officials gave various possible reasons for this, such as the physician was retired, worked at a different location or never worked at the address, according to the report.
Kaiser Health News reports CMS also detected wrong phone numbers for 521 physicians' offices and wrong addresses for 633 physicians' offices.
Jeremy Willard, also a health insurance specialist in the CMS surveillance division, said in the report that CMS has not issued any fines as of yet for inaccuracies found in the Medicare Advantage directories. However, such inaccuracies could lead to penalties up to $25,000 a day per beneficiary or bans on new enrollment and marketing, reports Kaiser Health News.
Meanwhile, federal officials hope a new rule requiring Medicare Advantage plans to contact physicians and other providers every three months and update their online directories in "real time" will help raise standards, according to the report.