On July 29th, CMS issued guidance to Medicare Advantage and Part D plan sponsors regarding requirements for 2011 certification programs. Some carriers released their 2011 Certification portals on August 2nd. Some carriers have delayed their certification process to review compliance with the recently issued guidance.
What does this mean? Since I’m familiar all of the items in the CMS document, I’m not quite sure to what extent AHIP training covers all of the items in CMS’ 8 pages outline of topics to be covered. I can say that AHIP doesn’t seem to cover the 2011 PPACA changes to OEP and the new Disenrollment period from Jan 1st – Feb 14th.
I’m not saying that this is an absolute guarantee, however, DON’T BE SURPRISED if you see some “additional training modules” coming out in the coming weeks for those who already passed certification early. I’m thinking there’s a better than even chance that current programs may need to be modified in light of the CMS guidance.
While we encourage folks to start early and take their time digesting the material, I think you should be on the lookout for “last minute” changes to certification.
As always, you can count on us to keep you up to date with detailed web pages on certification requirements! You may want to “check back” to our Medicare Advantage pages and look under “Certification” for your carriers to see if anything has changed!
Is the 2011 HealthNet Orange recertification available yet?
Harry:
I’m not familiar with the schedule for HealthNet. We represented them in the Eastern US, but not in the West.