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I’ve mentioned that am a huge fan of Knicole Manuel. You should check out her latest blog post about Targeted Probe and Educate (TPE) audits. The various Medicare regions were hitting wound care and hyperbaric medicine physicians/hospitals hard with TPEs prior to COVID. It seems the COVID hiatus is over. While the purpose of TPE is supposed to be for the MAC to “educate” us on things we need to do better to bill properly, all of the audits I know of in wound care or HBOT required the physicians to educate the auditor. Their guidance was wrong and the process was illogical.

As only one example, after the first round of “education,” when the MAC did the follow up audit, they audited a period of time PRIOR TO the original audit – which means of course, that the encounters happened before the practitioner/hospital could have implemented the guidance they gave. This was only one example of a process that was not educational, not logical, and not clinically correct. And now they are starting again. Check out Ms. Manuel’s latest blog below.

–Caroline

TPE and Prepay Audits: Speak Softly, But Carry a Big Stick