My wife, a Speech-Language Pathologist, was told a few weeks ago that she would be terminated because they had no evidence of her Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC’s) from a trade organization known as ASHA. This certification, as we learned, was a policy requirement of the company who believed that if she did not have the certification they wouldn’t be able to bill for her services. But was this so?
Following some investigation, I spoke with a 27 year veteran as Medicare Payment Administrator, responsible for all Medicare and Medicaid payment processing in my area. She candidly admitted that she never heard of ASHA, or the CCC’s, and that all that was required was a state license to practice.
Since bringing this to the attention of the facility, the policy of requiring the ASHA certificate was changed to “preferred”, for the facility at which she works as well as the nation-wide parent corporation.
In the middle of this process were three long-term employees responding to a policy of unknown origin, that upon reflection didn’t make sense. My wife, as you can imagine, went through several days of angst, and the staff wasted hours of time because no one along the process to ask the obvious question: was it true that a private trade organization certification is required for payment of professional services by a government entity? The answer was No.
