Chattanooga Orthopaedic Group, PC--TN

Although I do not disagree with the content or intentions of the rule, the change of implementation date from 1/3/2011 to 7/6/2010 will cause undue hardship on the providers of services due to an extraordinarily long processing time and poor communication regarding reenrollments by Cahaba's Provider Enrollment Department. When the initial rule was published that required referring or ordering providers to be in the PECOS system in order for claims to be paid appropriately, we researched our providers and discovered that several needed to be re-enrolled so that they would show up in the PECOS system. We started re-enrolling them in November 2009. We did not received confirmation of receipt until February 2010. After calling at the end of February for status of our enrollments, I was told that they could not be found (even though, I had tracking numbers and emailed confirmations from Cahaba). I was told not to resubmit the applications and that the Provider Enrollment team was probably just behind. However, I could not talk to them I could only have the customer service rep submit a request for a call back. I was promised a call back by the following Friday, which I did not receive. After several calls back to Cahaba for a status, I was told I would just have to wait for the call back from the orginal call. I received that call back from Provider Enrollment on 5/13/2010 (3 months from the original message left). The Provider Enrollment representative could still not find our re-enrollment applications that had been submitted via PECOS(again,I had confirmation and tracking numbers from Cahaba), but assured me that the providers were all in the PECOS system. Upon further research by me, they are still not all on the PECOS system. If we have to start over with the process and it takes another 6 months, then our claims and the claims of other suppliers for which we order services will be unfairly denied due to the ineptitude of Cahaba.