RETRAINING IN THE REMEDY COUNTY TAKING STEPS TO COMPLY WITH COURT ORDER.

Byline: Jennifer Klein Staff Writer

VENTURA - The county is spending $1 million to retrain 2,300 employees, hire an internal auditor and establish a whistle-blowers' hotline in order to comply with a federal court order arising from a probe of Medicare fraud, officials said Tuesday.

In a report to the Board of Supervisors, county Health Care Agency officials said they are taking nothing for granted as they inaugurate a five-year retraining program stemming from the $15.3 million settlement of Medicare billing problems.

``I truly think we will have a stronger organization for it,'' Supervisor Kathy Long said. ``The first time we heard about this I kind of rolled my eyes and thought this couldn't be done.''

The training is part of the so-called integrity agreement the county was forced to enter into in November after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ruled the county's medical center had been overbilling Medicare for mental health patients.

Mike Powers, compliance officer for the medical center, said all but about two dozen of the center's 2,323 employees have undergone training on the proper way to complete billing information.

The remaining 12 to 15 employees are contractors who have been informed they must go through the training in order to continue working for the county.

Powers said the county agency is doing in six months what normally takes most counties two years to complete.

``It's been a real strain,'' Powers said. ``They've (the workers) really done a tremendous job.''

Preparing training booklets and conducting the sessions will set the county back about $1 million the first year, but that cost is expected to decrease in coming years, when employees are retrained, Powers said.

Depending on their duties, employees have to attend two- to 10-hour sessions, as well as a two-hour overview session.

There also is a four-hour session on provider information as well as a four-hour session on reimbursement, Powers said.

Attendance is being closely monitored, with employees having to take tests at the end of the sessions as well as sign certifications for training and code of conduct, Powers said.

``It's everyone's role,'' Powers said about why it is necessary for all employees to go through the training. ``Medicare and Medi-Cal are vital funding streams and everyone needs to be aware of those funding streams.''

The county Health Care Agency is emphasizing that employees should not be afraid to speak up about a potential violation in either their department or another department.

A hotline has been established, and callers can choose to remain anonymous when calling with questions or complaints.

So far the hotline has received about 15 calls with most of them requiring only simple answers with a couple held over for review, Powers said.

Other highlights of the progress report include having established a compliance committee that meets monthly, enacting a computer database to track employee attendance at the training sessions, assigning tracking numbers to the compliance complaints that come in from employees and hiring an internal auditor, Powers said.

In the long run, the new training could bring more money to the county agency because hopefully fewer billing requests will be rejected because of inaccuracy, Powers said.

Supervisors Susan Lacey and Long thought of another potential way to bring in some extra money: marketing the several-hundred-page training manuals and videos the agency has had to come up with for the compliance.