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ate last year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and its coordination of benefits contractor, the BCRC, soft launched a process to largely eliminate paper mail correspondence in favor of completely electronic correspondence. “Go Paperless” saves time, eliminates the risk of undelivered or misdelivered mail, and ensures that correspondence is timely received and acted upon. Ultimately, Go Paperless dramatically expands the timeframe to file a dispute or an appeal and substantially reduces risk for all parties. Let’s explore Go Paperless and who should use it.
What is Go Paperless?
Go Paperless allows any Medicare Secondary Payer Recovery Portal user to “opt in” to receive electronic correspondence in lieu of paper correspondence delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. Rather than wait for mail to arrive, an email is sent each morning notifying the portal Account Manager that correspondence is available on the portal to download. Provided that the user has multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled, the user will be able to download letters on demand. It is as simple as that.
How Does Go Paperless Work?
- To enroll in Go Paperless, the responsible reporting entity (RRE) must enable “Go Paperless” via the TIN reference file in the quarterly Section 111 claim input file, which is filed with Medicare. If an agent is chosen, the RRE must identify the agent and confirm that the agent has elected to Go Paperless.
- Once enabled, the user receives an email alert whenever there is conditional payment correspondence available for download.
- The user then logs into the Portal with MFA enabled, and chooses to either download individual conditional payment correspondence or all pieces of correspondence.
- The user now has the letter on the day that it is released, allowing the user to get a jump on any conditional payment dispute, appeal, or payment.
- Finally, letters are available in the portal up to thirty days after they are published.
Who can Use Go Paperless?
Go Paperless can be used by any portal user. Go Paperless provides correspondence on the date that it is released, in lieu of paper correspondence. If an RRE or agent has enabled Go Paperless, there is no waiting for letters to arrive and – perhaps more importantly – there is little to no chance of misrouted or misdelivered mail. For this reason, Go Paperless is strongly recommended for any RRE or agent that processes a high volume of conditional payment correspondence.
Are There Any Drawbacks with Go Paperless?
A Go Paperless user elects to receive recovery-oriented correspondence electronically, versus via the U.S. mail. Ideally, the downloaded correspondence can be immediately triaged and prioritized for response. Organizations without a sophisticated or dedicated conditional payment recovery operation will likely want to avoid Go Paperless. Users must also have MFA enabled, so organizations that discourage the use of MFA by their personnel may not be able to utilize Go Paperless. Finally, for an RRE Go Paperless is aligned with the tax identification number. Companies that report using multiple TINs may find Go Paperless frustrating because it will require multiple MSPRP accounts.
Why You or Your Agent Should Enroll in Go Paperless
Despite these drawbacks, Go Paperless is a major improvement over the paper mail process for the large majority of recovery agents, as well as RREs that handle their own conditional payment recovery. ECS enrolled in Go Paperless during the soft-launch and we have utilized Go Paperless across-the-board since its wide launch in January 2022.
The results speak for themselves. Turnaround times have dropped, simply because we receive conditional payment notices, demands, or letters between seven and ten days prior to snail mail correspondence. For RREs who handled their own recovery claims, the risk of Medicare attempting recovery against dormant or long-changed addresses has been substantially reduced, as the RRE will receive correspondence via Go Paperless rather than at a bad address. Because mail is sent in a clean PDF, it is more easily triaged, its contents are more easily read, and decisions to pay, dispute, or appeal are more self-evident. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a Go Paperless recovery agent can easily coordinate correspondence across an RRE’s entire book of claims regardless of the number of TINs or addresses used by the RRE, allowing for improved and more sophisticated recovery triage and aggregate reporting.
With all of these benefits, it’s difficult to conceive of why your recovery agent would not want to utilize the Go Paperless process. ECS has found the process to present a significant improvement over paper mail, which is especially important given the recent struggles (during the pandemic) of the Postal Service to promptly deliver mail. Time is money when it comes to conditional payments, and an opportunity to get a ten day jump on disputes or appeals is a no brainer.
ECS offers a number of programmatic conditional payment options, all of which utilize Go Paperless. To learn more about how your organization can gain this important benefit, contact your local account representative or ECS’ Senior Vice President of MSP Compliance and Business Development, Marty Cassavoy at 781-517-8085 or email martin.cassavoy@examworkscompliance.com
