Several of our hospitals who recently attested to Medicare meaningful use have reported it taking longer than expected to receive notification from Trailblazers confirming their attestation submission and requesting cost date for the CAH incentive payment. Over the last year most hospitals received the letter within two to three weeks of attestation; they then have 10 days to complete and return the incentive calculation materials (we would like to remind all CAHs that are reading this blog to use the workbook we developed for this purpose as it has a high success rate in terms of approval and closely follows recently released CMS audit guidelines).

Just this week, Trailblazers told one of our CAHs that they receive the attestation file from CMS only on a monthly basis-thus hospitals who attest early in the month can wait up to four weeks to receive their notification letter!

Trailblazers also noted that attestations done in September will be handled initially by them in terms of sending the notification letter and receiving the cost data-but this will then be turned over to Novitas for processing. Please alert us to any issues you are seeing with the Novitas transition for incentive payments.