When is my Patient Required to Sign a New Advance Beneficiary Notice (ABN)?
There is a widely held misconception among chiropractic practices that patients who are Medicare beneficiaries are required to sign a new Mandatory ABN at the start of each new year. Contrary to that popular belief, there is no need to automatically initiate a Medicare patient’s signature on a new Mandatory ABN form as part of your paperwork procedures at the beginning of a new calendar year.
Has your practice implemented this procedure, regardless of the Medicare patient’s treatment status? Terminate this process immediately and follow the guidelines outlined below.
Medicare requires that the Mandatory ABN form be completed before the first spinal Chiropractic Manipulative Treatment (CMT) is rendered for maintenance, wellness, palliative, and/or supportive care. That signed ABN remains active until either of the following takes place:
- A new condition or active treatment is initiated. The current ABN would be rendered invalid because the active treatment CMT would likely meet Medicare’s medical necessity guidelines and be considered eligible for payment; or
- It has been 12 months since initiation of the current mandatory ABN. A new, updated ABN would be required to continue the maintenance care, and then that ABN would be good for up to 12 months or until the beginning of another episode of active treatment.
Since all patients are on different treatment protocols, there is no reason to automatically require every patient to sign a new ABN at the beginning of each year. This constitutes improper use of the ABN. Please stop this practice!
Need more guidance on Medicare? Give us a call at (855) TEAMKMC or schedule your Solution Consultation today:
...Not only is the Library impressive, but our one-on-one coaching with our Subject Matter Expert, Jill, was what really got us through this process. Jill got us set up with a portal to organize our work and keep us on task, coached us via phone call to discover any risks and resolve them, and continued to meet with us until all our assignments were completed. We still have some things to finish up throughout the remainder of the year, but Jill expertly trained us so that we can stand on our own from here and complete the process ourselves. To me, the ability to feel confident enough in this process to continue on my own is the most valuable thing, and Jill and KMC have provided us with that ability...