UnitedHealth Group of Minneapolis, a managed health care company, has extended its deadline for freestanding imaging facilities and physician offices to apply for accreditation to receive reimbursement for their services until fourth quarter, 2009. Its original deadline for accreditation was March 1, but earlier this year the insurer pushed that to the third quarter of 2008. However, in an August 20 notice to imaging services providers, UnitedHealth said it was extending the deadline again because of feedback from physicians, imaging professionals, and specialty societies, as well as the recently passed federal legislation.

The notice explained that UnitedHealth's decision to postpone was based on the "recent implementation of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA) requiring providers of advanced imaging services to be accredited by Jan. 1, 2012. Effective this date, accreditation will become a mandatory requirement in order to receive payment for the technical component of imaging services. UnitedHealth feels it will be beneficial to its network providers to more closely align the reimbursement adjustment timeline with MIPPA.

The notice also pointed out that the growth in the number of accredited practices is impressive; however, the company has also received feedback that some communities may not have a sufficient number of accredited facilities to meet patient and physician needs.

Imaging facilities and physician offices still have the option to apply for accreditation, through either the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC) of Columbia, MD, or the American College of Radiology (ACR), Reston, VA. Accreditation is a peer-review process through which both technologists and physicians review an application's cases, images, and final reports.

The IAC and ACR met with UnitedHealth last month to discuss the status of the policy and providers' compliance. Sandra Katanick, IAC CEO said her organization recognizes UnitedHealth's "dilemma of not having enough of their providers accredited and the potential of losing access to imaging services for their customers." She went on to say that the IAC understood and congratulated UnitedHealth for not removing the requirement altogether -- giving people more time to get it done. Katanick said she felt that it was a hard decision for UnitedHealth to make regarding pushing back the accreditation deadline yet again.

Since UnitedHealth announced its accreditation policy early last year, the application rate for accreditation has tripled at the IAC according to Katanick. She said that IAC has, along with an increase in application rate, seen a decrease in the quality of the images and a decrease in the quality of the final reports. "Our decisions for accreditation can be to either grant or delay a lab for deficiencies. We have seen that delay rate increase pretty significantly," said Katanick.

Read prior coverage of this important topic at:
https://www.dotmed.com/news/story/3165/

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