Suppliers now have a way to compare their referral sources against a list of those registered in the PECOS database!

With the issuance of CR6421, CMS promised to provide DME suppliers with a searchable database of PECOS enrolled physician and non-physician practitioners prior to the implementation of rejections on April 5, 2010. On January 28, 2010 CMS made good on their promise in the form of a 13,653 page .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file, containing the NPIs, first and last names of all Medicare eligible referral sources currently enrolled in PECOS. The file is 16.63 MB in size and includes approximately 800,000 physician and non-physician practitioner records sorted by last name.

DME suppliers may download the file here:

http://www.cms.hhs.gov/MedicareProviderSupEnroll/Downloads/OrderingReferringReport.pdf.

Due to the size of the file, download times may range anywhere from 42 seconds to 42+ minutes, depending on the speed of your internet connection. For us, it took approximately 1.5 minutes. Once your download is complete, be sure to save the file to a specific location on your computer, so you don’t have to re-download later.

The good news, is that suppliers who download the file will now have a way to verify whether or not their ordering physicians are enrolled in PECOS. Using the search (Ctrl+F) feature, suppliers may look-up the NPIs of referring physicians and verify the correct spelling of their first and last names, as listed in the PECOS database. The bad news, is that since the file is in a .pdf format, there is no easy way to narrow down, filter, or otherwise sort through the nearly 800,000 records.

Suppliers should keep in mind that the list is a work in progress and will be updated/replaced on a monthly basis. Also, because of the time it takes contractors to review a physician’s PECOS enrollment application (typically 45-60 days), newly enrolling physicians may not be included in the searchable list until two or even three months after they submit their application.