Accreditation

All facilities providing mammography must be certified by the FDA under the MQSA. To be certified, a facility must be accredited. The FDA has designated the ACR as an accrediting body.

MIPPA requires providers of MRI, CT, PET and nuclear medicine exams that bill under the fee schedule be accredited by Jan. 2012 in order to receive Medicare payments. CMS has designated the ACR as an accrediting body.

Facilities seeking ACR accreditation in other modalities do so voluntarily, but for a variety of very good reasons:

• Peer review, educationally-focused evaluation of practice
• May document need for dedicated equipment, continuing education or qualified personnel
• Expert assessment of image quality
• Formal review may be used to meet criteria of ACS, state or federal government, or third-party payers
• Medicare and other payers have enacted reimbursement policies that may require accreditation
• Marketing tool

Effective Jan. 1 2012, all providers that bill for MRI, CT, PET and nuclear medicine under part B of the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule must be accredited in order to receive technical component reimbursement from Medicare.

The ACR has the expertise and infrastructure to assist large numbers of advanced medical imaging providers get accredited and protect their reimbursements by the Jan. 1 2012 deadline mandated by CMS.

The ACR has accredited more than 20,000 facilities and has a dedicated staff of certified radiologic technologists to guide providers through the accreditation process. ACR accreditation is a comprehensive, yet flexible process where special attention is paid to image quality in addition to equipment, quality control procedures, quality assurance programs, and personnel qualifications.

Even if you have received accreditation in CT, MRI, PET and nuclear medicine imaging, these are newly mandated requirements for CMS reimbursements after Jan. 1, 2012. 

• Verification of personnel qualifications with primary source verification
• Policy on patient record retention/retrieval
• Policy on consumer complaints
• A notice informing the patients where they can file a consumer complaint must be posted
• Policy on staff and patient safety
• No "under review" or "provisional" accreditation status
• Unannounced site visits may be from the ACR or CMS
• ACR must share accreditation information with CMS
• False or misleading information provided to an accrediting body to achieve accreditation can be used to initiate a federal fraud investigation