Medication synchronization programs have many benefits for community pharmacies (and your patients) – improved workflow of your team, leaner “just in time’ inventory replenishment and fewer patient trips to the pharmacy.
Unfortunately, medication synchronization also poses a threat of waste or abuse if it goes off the rails. PAAS National® analysts have noticed PBMs auditing for refills of high-cost maintenance medications that seem to be filled especially early every month (e.g., every 23 days on a 30 days’ supply) – remember that PBM audit algorithms are looking for FWA conducted by bad actors and will use data analysis as a reason to audit your pharmacy if the claims look suspicious.
Most independent pharmacies can tell numerous stories about patients bringing in large quantities of unwanted or unused medications that they received from a PBM mail-order pharmacy because the refills just kept coming. In fact, Express Scripts was named in a recently unsealed False Claims Act lawsuit from 2019 due to automatic refills of medications for TRICARE beneficiaries. The complaint states that Express Scripts set up 90-day supply medications for refill on day 60 (of 90) which represented only 67% utilization. Over time these early refills accumulated such that over a one-year period patients would have received nearly 500 days’ worth of medication. Surely, these extra fills benefitted the dispensing pharmacy, but at an inappropriate cost to patients and plan sponsors.
See the tips below to ensure that your medication synchronization program will stand up to PBM scrutiny and keep you out of harm’s way.
PAAS Tips: Become an audit assistance member today to continue reading this article. As a member, you’ll have access to hundreds of articles and receive our monthly proactive newsletter!
Did you know there is much more to your audit assistance membership than just help with audits? The PAAS Member Portal contains a wealth of information and resources to assist you with audits and member service questions. Below is a list of 6 pages found on the Audit Assistance section of the PAAS Member Portal to assist you and your pharmacy staff to be proactive when it comes to audits.
- Access Services
- Audit Documentation Submission Guidance
- An online form to submit safe filling and billing questions
- Your PAAS Membership Manual
- Newsline
- Monthly newsletter articles, written by our expert PAAS analyst team, provide safe filling and billing tips and relays relevant/current PBM trends to be help prevent audits
- Search the Newsline Archive to get PAAS tips at the click of a button
- Special Edition Newslines including: Top 10 articles of the prior year, DMEPOS Article Series and a Self-Audit Article Series
- Ability to print monthly issues or individual articles
- Proactive Tips
- Audit flags – list of various claim attributes the PBMs use to select claims for audit
- Billing insulin vials – flowchart to assist whether you should bill Medicare Part B vs Part D
- DAW Codes Explained – use to understand when to effectively use DAW codes, their definitions and why claims may be flagged for audit if a DAW code is used incorrectly
- Basic DMEPOS documentation guidance
- Onsite Credentialing Checklist and expanded definitions of policies and procedures
- Proof of refill request and affirmative response form for DMEPOS items
- Steps on how to prepare for an onsite audit
- And more!
- Days’ Supply Charts
- Utilize the days’ supply charts for inhalers, insulins, nasal sprays, eye drops and topicals to aid you in calculating the correct days’ supply
- Guidance on overbilled quantities and incorrect days’ supply account for a sizable portion of audit chargebacks
- Additional miscellaneous charts, which include: Dispense in Original Container and Return to Stock
- Forms
- Signature Logbook for print
- Signature Trifold Mailer
- Fax and Email Coversheet
- Patient Attestation for over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits
- On-Demand Webinars
- Short webinars on hot topics in the PBM industry. Here are a few examples:
- USP 800 Compliance
- Cultural Competency Training
- Dispensing Prescriptions Off-Label
- Biologic Medications and Interchangeability
- Continuous Glucose Monitor Requirements for Medicare Part B
PAAS Tips:
- MORE AUDITS, MORE INSIGHT – PAAS National® is the industry-leading defender of community pharmacy dealings with Prescription Benefit Programs, including Caremark, Express Scripts, Humana, Medicaid, OptumRx, Prime Therapeutics., and more. PAAS assists on all third-party audits, including: desktop audits, onsite audits, invoice audits, OIG/Medicaid audits, Medicare B audits. The PAAS team is dedicated to helping you! We have five pharmacists and a complement of technician analysts with over 50 years of dedicated audit assistance experience. PAAS continuously updates their database with every audit received — in fact, we even keep a scorecard on individual auditors.
- Get answers to your questions on days’ supply calculations, drug substitutions, billing practices, required documentation, prior authorization requirements, record retention, and internal audit procedures – just to name a few. As a trusted partner, we will provide tailored guidance to help you proactively prevent audits. Remember, the prescription claims you submit today are the audits of the future.
- Keep your employees engaged and help lower audit risk by adding all employees to the portal and giving them permission to access these tools, resources and eNewsline. For more information review September 2019 Newsline article, What Are You Waiting For? Make Sure ALL of Your Employees are Added to the PAAS Portal!
- Contact PAAS at (608) 873-1342, if you would like a tour of your PAAS Member Portal, so you can reap all the benefits of your PAAS Audit Assistance. We appreciate you being a member.
Could You Be Giving Vaginal Creams Away for Free?
PAAS National® analysts continue to see claims for Premarin® and Estrace® creams being audited and recouped. Pharmacies not calculating the accurate days’ supply are in jeopardy of refilling too soon. These early refills will be taken back during audit which means the pharmacy is basically handing the medication out for free.
Since these vaginal creams only come in one package size, instructions rarely support the days’ supply to be 30. This makes your claims easy targets if you are consistently defaulting the days’ supply. Software default fields, plan limits, or data entry errors should all be reviewed to ensure you have safeguards in place to prevent losing these claims.
PAAS Tips:Join today!
- Access Services
- Audit Documentation Submission Guidance
- An online form to submit safe filling and billing questions
- Your PAAS Membership Manual
- Newsline
- Monthly newsletter articles, written by our expert PAAS analyst team, provide safe filling and billing tips and relays relevant/current PBM trends to be help prevent audits
- Search the Newsline Archive to get PAAS tips at the click of a button
- Special Edition Newslines including: Top 10 articles of the prior year, DMEPOS Article Series and a Self-Audit Article Series
- Ability to print monthly issues or individual articles
- Proactive Tips
- Audit flags – list of various claim attributes the PBMs use to select claims for audit
- Billing insulin vials – flowchart to assist whether you should bill Medicare Part B vs Part D
- DAW Codes Explained – use to understand when to effectively use DAW codes, their definitions and why claims may be flagged for audit if a DAW code is used incorrectly
- Basic DMEPOS documentation guidance
- Onsite Credentialing Checklist and expanded definitions of policies and procedures
- Proof of refill request and affirmative response form for DMEPOS items
- Steps on how to prepare for an onsite audit
- And more!
- Days’ Supply Charts
- Utilize the days’ supply charts for inhalers, insulins, nasal sprays, eye drops and topicals to aid you in calculating the correct days’ supply
- Guidance on overbilled quantities and incorrect days’ supply account for a sizable portion of audit chargebacks
- Additional miscellaneous charts, which include: Dispense in Original Container and Return to Stock
- Forms
- Signature Logbook for print
- Signature Trifold Mailer
- Fax and Email Coversheet
- Patient Attestation for over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits
- On-Demand Webinars
- Short webinars on hot topics in the PBM industry. Here are a few examples:
- USP 800 Compliance
- Cultural Competency Training
- Dispensing Prescriptions Off-Label
- Biologic Medications and Interchangeability
- Continuous Glucose Monitor Requirements for Medicare Part B
- MORE AUDITS, MORE INSIGHT – PAAS National® is the industry-leading defender of community pharmacy dealings with Prescription Benefit Programs, including Caremark, Express Scripts, Humana, Medicaid, OptumRx, Prime Therapeutics., and more. PAAS assists on all third-party audits, including: desktop audits, onsite audits, invoice audits, OIG/Medicaid audits, Medicare B audits. The PAAS team is dedicated to helping you! We have five pharmacists and a complement of technician analysts with over 50 years of dedicated audit assistance experience. PAAS continuously updates their database with every audit received — in fact, we even keep a scorecard on individual auditors.
- Get answers to your questions on days’ supply calculations, drug substitutions, billing practices, required documentation, prior authorization requirements, record retention, and internal audit procedures – just to name a few. As a trusted partner, we will provide tailored guidance to help you proactively prevent audits. Remember, the prescription claims you submit today are the audits of the future.
- Keep your employees engaged and help lower audit risk by adding all employees to the portal and giving them permission to access these tools, resources and eNewsline. For more information review September 2019 Newsline article, What Are You Waiting For? Make Sure ALL of Your Employees are Added to the PAAS Portal!
- Contact PAAS at (608) 873-1342, if you would like a tour of your PAAS Member Portal, so you can reap all the benefits of your PAAS Audit Assistance. We appreciate you being a member.
Did you know there is much more to your audit assistance membership than just help with audits? The PAAS Member Portal contains a wealth of information and resources to assist you with audits and member service questions. Below is a list of 6 pages found on the Audit Assistance section of the PAAS Member Portal to assist you and your pharmacy staff to be proactive when it comes to audits.
PAAS Tips:
Medication Synchronization: Possible Concerns
Medication synchronization programs have many benefits for community pharmacies (and your patients) – improved workflow of your team, leaner “just in time’ inventory replenishment and fewer patient trips to the pharmacy.
Unfortunately, medication synchronization also poses a threat of waste or abuse if it goes off the rails. PAAS National® analysts have noticed PBMs auditing for refills of high-cost maintenance medications that seem to be filled especially early every month (e.g., every 23 days on a 30 days’ supply) – remember that PBM audit algorithms are looking for FWA conducted by bad actors and will use data analysis as a reason to audit your pharmacy if the claims look suspicious.
Most independent pharmacies can tell numerous stories about patients bringing in large quantities of unwanted or unused medications that they received from a PBM mail-order pharmacy because the refills just kept coming. In fact, Express Scripts was named in a recently unsealed False Claims Act lawsuit from 2019 due to automatic refills of medications for TRICARE beneficiaries. The complaint states that Express Scripts set up 90-day supply medications for refill on day 60 (of 90) which represented only 67% utilization. Over time these early refills accumulated such that over a one-year period patients would have received nearly 500 days’ worth of medication. Surely, these extra fills benefitted the dispensing pharmacy, but at an inappropriate cost to patients and plan sponsors.
See the tips below to ensure that your medication synchronization program will stand up to PBM scrutiny and keep you out of harm’s way.
PAAS Tips:Join today!
- Access Services
- Audit Documentation Submission Guidance
- An online form to submit safe filling and billing questions
- Your PAAS Membership Manual
- Newsline
- Monthly newsletter articles, written by our expert PAAS analyst team, provide safe filling and billing tips and relays relevant/current PBM trends to be help prevent audits
- Search the Newsline Archive to get PAAS tips at the click of a button
- Special Edition Newslines including: Top 10 articles of the prior year, DMEPOS Article Series and a Self-Audit Article Series
- Ability to print monthly issues or individual articles
- Proactive Tips
- Audit flags – list of various claim attributes the PBMs use to select claims for audit
- Billing insulin vials – flowchart to assist whether you should bill Medicare Part B vs Part D
- DAW Codes Explained – use to understand when to effectively use DAW codes, their definitions and why claims may be flagged for audit if a DAW code is used incorrectly
- Basic DMEPOS documentation guidance
- Onsite Credentialing Checklist and expanded definitions of policies and procedures
- Proof of refill request and affirmative response form for DMEPOS items
- Steps on how to prepare for an onsite audit
- And more!
- Days’ Supply Charts
- Utilize the days’ supply charts for inhalers, insulins, nasal sprays, eye drops and topicals to aid you in calculating the correct days’ supply
- Guidance on overbilled quantities and incorrect days’ supply account for a sizable portion of audit chargebacks
- Additional miscellaneous charts, which include: Dispense in Original Container and Return to Stock
- Forms
- Signature Logbook for print
- Signature Trifold Mailer
- Fax and Email Coversheet
- Patient Attestation for over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits
- On-Demand Webinars
- Short webinars on hot topics in the PBM industry. Here are a few examples:
- USP 800 Compliance
- Cultural Competency Training
- Dispensing Prescriptions Off-Label
- Biologic Medications and Interchangeability
- Continuous Glucose Monitor Requirements for Medicare Part B
- MORE AUDITS, MORE INSIGHT – PAAS National® is the industry-leading defender of community pharmacy dealings with Prescription Benefit Programs, including Caremark, Express Scripts, Humana, Medicaid, OptumRx, Prime Therapeutics., and more. PAAS assists on all third-party audits, including: desktop audits, onsite audits, invoice audits, OIG/Medicaid audits, Medicare B audits. The PAAS team is dedicated to helping you! We have five pharmacists and a complement of technician analysts with over 50 years of dedicated audit assistance experience. PAAS continuously updates their database with every audit received — in fact, we even keep a scorecard on individual auditors.
- Get answers to your questions on days’ supply calculations, drug substitutions, billing practices, required documentation, prior authorization requirements, record retention, and internal audit procedures – just to name a few. As a trusted partner, we will provide tailored guidance to help you proactively prevent audits. Remember, the prescription claims you submit today are the audits of the future.
- Keep your employees engaged and help lower audit risk by adding all employees to the portal and giving them permission to access these tools, resources and eNewsline. For more information review September 2019 Newsline article, What Are You Waiting For? Make Sure ALL of Your Employees are Added to the PAAS Portal!
- Contact PAAS at (608) 873-1342, if you would like a tour of your PAAS Member Portal, so you can reap all the benefits of your PAAS Audit Assistance. We appreciate you being a member.
Did you know there is much more to your audit assistance membership than just help with audits? The PAAS Member Portal contains a wealth of information and resources to assist you with audits and member service questions. Below is a list of 6 pages found on the Audit Assistance section of the PAAS Member Portal to assist you and your pharmacy staff to be proactive when it comes to audits.
PAAS Tips:
DMEPOS Mini-Series #4 – Urological Supplies: Intermittent Catheters
If you are a Medicare Part B supplier, then you are aware that billing Medicare B is quite different than billing other payors, and consequently, can be incredibly challenging for pharmacies. Being able to produce all the required documentation upon an audit, and making sure that the documentation meets Medicare Part B requirements, is a daunting task.
Medicare performs post-payment medical reviews on intermittent catheters due to having a high, sustained error rate. The top errors are:
Follow the tips below to be prepared in case of an intermittent urinary catheter audit.
PAAS Tips:
Did you know there is much more to your audit assistance membership than just help with audits? The PAAS Member Portal contains a wealth of information and resources to assist you with audits and member service questions. Below is a list of 6 pages found on the Audit Assistance section of the PAAS Member Portal to assist you and your pharmacy staff to be proactive when it comes to audits.
PAAS Tips:
Metformin ER – Can I Substitute?
Many pharmacies struggle with identifying which metformin ER product they can dispense or substitute. There are three different strengths and three different extended-release mechanisms. The FDA uses Therapeutic Equivalency (TE) codes to show which generic products can be substituted for a specific brand name. When there are multiple branded versions of an identical active drug ingredient, form, and route of administration, then the FDA must assign each brand an additional identifier such as AB, AB1, AB2 and AB3. The brand names below are different due to their extended-release mechanisms. Generic versions may only be substituted for the brand with the same TE code.
TE Codes
For example, if you receive a prescription for Fortamet® 1000 mg, you may dispense with the brand name product or a generic formulation with a TE code of AB2
PAAS Tips:Join today!
- Access Services
- Audit Documentation Submission Guidance
- An online form to submit safe filling and billing questions
- Your PAAS Membership Manual
- Newsline
- Monthly newsletter articles, written by our expert PAAS analyst team, provide safe filling and billing tips and relays relevant/current PBM trends to be help prevent audits
- Search the Newsline Archive to get PAAS tips at the click of a button
- Special Edition Newslines including: Top 10 articles of the prior year, DMEPOS Article Series and a Self-Audit Article Series
- Ability to print monthly issues or individual articles
- Proactive Tips
- Audit flags – list of various claim attributes the PBMs use to select claims for audit
- Billing insulin vials – flowchart to assist whether you should bill Medicare Part B vs Part D
- DAW Codes Explained – use to understand when to effectively use DAW codes, their definitions and why claims may be flagged for audit if a DAW code is used incorrectly
- Basic DMEPOS documentation guidance
- Onsite Credentialing Checklist and expanded definitions of policies and procedures
- Proof of refill request and affirmative response form for DMEPOS items
- Steps on how to prepare for an onsite audit
- And more!
- Days’ Supply Charts
- Utilize the days’ supply charts for inhalers, insulins, nasal sprays, eye drops and topicals to aid you in calculating the correct days’ supply
- Guidance on overbilled quantities and incorrect days’ supply account for a sizable portion of audit chargebacks
- Additional miscellaneous charts, which include: Dispense in Original Container and Return to Stock
- Forms
- Signature Logbook for print
- Signature Trifold Mailer
- Fax and Email Coversheet
- Patient Attestation for over-the-counter COVID-19 test kits
- On-Demand Webinars
- Short webinars on hot topics in the PBM industry. Here are a few examples:
- USP 800 Compliance
- Cultural Competency Training
- Dispensing Prescriptions Off-Label
- Biologic Medications and Interchangeability
- Continuous Glucose Monitor Requirements for Medicare Part B
- MORE AUDITS, MORE INSIGHT – PAAS National® is the industry-leading defender of community pharmacy dealings with Prescription Benefit Programs, including Caremark, Express Scripts, Humana, Medicaid, OptumRx, Prime Therapeutics., and more. PAAS assists on all third-party audits, including: desktop audits, onsite audits, invoice audits, OIG/Medicaid audits, Medicare B audits. The PAAS team is dedicated to helping you! We have five pharmacists and a complement of technician analysts with over 50 years of dedicated audit assistance experience. PAAS continuously updates their database with every audit received — in fact, we even keep a scorecard on individual auditors.
- Get answers to your questions on days’ supply calculations, drug substitutions, billing practices, required documentation, prior authorization requirements, record retention, and internal audit procedures – just to name a few. As a trusted partner, we will provide tailored guidance to help you proactively prevent audits. Remember, the prescription claims you submit today are the audits of the future.
- Keep your employees engaged and help lower audit risk by adding all employees to the portal and giving them permission to access these tools, resources and eNewsline. For more information review September 2019 Newsline article, What Are You Waiting For? Make Sure ALL of Your Employees are Added to the PAAS Portal!
- Contact PAAS at (608) 873-1342, if you would like a tour of your PAAS Member Portal, so you can reap all the benefits of your PAAS Audit Assistance. We appreciate you being a member.
Did you know there is much more to your audit assistance membership than just help with audits? The PAAS Member Portal contains a wealth of information and resources to assist you with audits and member service questions. Below is a list of 6 pages found on the Audit Assistance section of the PAAS Member Portal to assist you and your pharmacy staff to be proactive when it comes to audits.
PAAS Tips:
LIVE WEBINAR AUGUST 17th: Understanding Interchangeability with Prescription Biologics
Join President of PAAS National®, Trenton Thiede, PharmD, MBA for a LIVE webinar “Understanding Interchangeability with Prescription Biologics” on August 17, 2022 from 2-2:45pm CT as he discusses:
We will allow for some Q&A at the end of the webinar. If you would like to submit questions prior to the webinar, please click here.
SIGN UP TODAY!
PAAS Audit Assistance members will have access to a recording on the PAAS Member Portal if they are unable to attend the live event.
DMEPOS Targeted Probe and Educate Program – Process Improvement Plan
In the October 2021 Newsline article CMS Resumes Targeted Probe and Educate Program to Improve Billing Accuracy and Reduce Claim Denials and Appeals available to PAAS Audit Assistance members on the Member Portal, PAAS National® analysts provided details about Medicare’s Targeted Probe and Educate Program (TPE). Since then, there has been a sharp increase in the number of TPE audits on diabetic testing supplies. Many pharmacies have already received an initial 10-claim “probe”, and some have moved on to round one, an evaluation of an additional 20 to 40 claims. At the end of round one, the pharmacy will receive a results letter with:
Below are some of the commonly flagged deficiency categories:
Did you know there is much more to your audit assistance membership than just help with audits? The PAAS Member Portal contains a wealth of information and resources to assist you with audits and member service questions. Below is a list of 6 pages found on the Audit Assistance section of the PAAS Member Portal to assist you and your pharmacy staff to be proactive when it comes to audits.
PAAS Tips:
DMEPOS Mini-Series #3 – Diabetic Test Strips
If you are a Medicare Part B supplier, then you have likely had an audit on diabetic test strips. Billing Medicare Part B is quite different than other payors, and consequently, can be very challenging for pharmacies. Being able to produce all the required documentation upon an audit, and making sure that the documentation meets Medicare Part B requirements, is a daunting task. Follow the tips below to be prepared in case of a test strip audit.
Did you know there is much more to your audit assistance membership than just help with audits? The PAAS Member Portal contains a wealth of information and resources to assist you with audits and member service questions. Below is a list of 6 pages found on the Audit Assistance section of the PAAS Member Portal to assist you and your pharmacy staff to be proactive when it comes to audits.
PAAS Tips:
On-Demand Webinar: Caremark’s Bulk Purchasing Requirements and the Importance of Cultural Competency
On June 15, 2022 PAAS National® hosted Caremark’s Bulk Purchasing Requirements and the Importance of Cultural Competency webinar. PAAS Audit Assistance members have access to the recorded webinar, in addition to many other tools and resources on the PAAS Member Portal.
For easy viewing, we’ve split the webinar into two separate recordings.
The importance of Cultural Competency reviews:
Caremark’s Bulk Purchasing Requirements reviews:
New Tools Available! Biologic and Non-Biologic Injectable Medication Reference Charts
Ever wonder if you were billing the correct NDC for a Humira® prescription and had to spend precious time investigating? Or how about questioning if you were billing the correct package size for Gvoke® and had to consult multiple references just to try and figure out the answer? Perhaps you had audit on Ajovy® only to find your pharmacy facing recoupment because the auto-injector was billed but the script was written for the pre-filled syringe.
PAAS National® now has two new reference charts available to help you and your staff with billing these unique injectable products correctly. Check out the Biologic Injectable Medication Chart and Non-Biological Injectable Medication Chart under the Tools & Aids section of the PAAS Member Portal.
PAAS Tips:
A Need for a Compliance Program – Attest with Confidence
Since 2009, PAAS National® Fraud, Waste & Abuse and HIPAA Compliance program was designed to meet the CMS requirements, with the full support of our expert staff – pharmacists and technicians just like you, with years of experience helping community pharmacies with FWA and HIPAA compliance. Don’t be fooled by offers for training and exclusion checks – work with the best compliance program available to community pharmacies!
Consider the following:
Humana’s 2022 Notice of Program Requirements
Humana’s Compliance Policy for Contracted Healthcare Providers explicitly states pharmacies must have a compliance program that meets the seven elements outlined by CMS, including written policies, procedures and standards of conduct. Per the 2022 Pharmacy Compliance Education and Training Requirements FAQs: “Humana reserves the right to request documentation (e.g., policies and tracking records) confirming that your organization has an effective compliance program that meets the requirements outlined in the Compliance Policy and Standards of Conduct.”
PerformRx Pharmacy Compliance Attestation 2022/2023
PerformRx requires attestations to the following:
The pharmacy has implemented and maintains a compliance program that is consistent, at minimum, with applicable federal and state requirements, including, but not limited to the standards set forth in 42 CFR §423.504(b)(4)(vi) and other Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance set forth in the Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Benefit Manual.
Be proactive. Be prepared. Be protected. Ensure you have all your compliance bases met so that when you attest to having one, you can provide proof if requested for credentialing or audit.
Don’t have an FWA/HIPAA Compliance Program? Contact PAAS and receive a $126 discount when you combine services with your audit assistance. Get started today! info@paasnational.com or (608) 873-1342.