Proof of delivery, done right

Why POD is where shops get caught

Proof of delivery sits at the intersection of two enforcement worlds. Your accreditation surveyor pulls PODs to test whether your operation matches your policies. Medicare's claim reviewers and auditors pull PODs to decide whether paid claims were legitimate — and a claim without a valid POD is treated as an overpayment you return. Same piece of paper, two ways to lose. That's why it earns the "most-cited" reputation.

The good news: POD is also the most fixable standard in the entire program. It's a form and a filing habit.

What a valid POD contains — hand delivery

When you or your driver hand the item to the patient (or their designee), the delivery record should show:

• Beneficiary's nameAnd, if someone else accepted delivery, that person's name and relationship to the patient.
• Delivery addressWhere the item actually went.
• What was delivered, specificallyItem description, quantity, and brand/model detail sufficient to tie the paper to the claim — serial numbers for serialized equipment.
• Date of deliveryWritten at delivery time. For hand deliveries, the delivery date is generally your date of service.
• SignatureBeneficiary or designee, dated. Unsigned or undated tickets are the classic finding.

Accreditation standards also expect evidence the patient was instructed in the item's use and, for home deliveries, that basic home-safety considerations were addressed — one added line on the same ticket covers each.

What a valid POD looks like — shipped orders

If you ship via a carrier, the patient's signature is replaced by the shipping evidence chain:

• Your shipping invoice or delivery slip naming the beneficiary, address, and items, matched to
• the carrier's tracking record showing delivery, with
• a consistent date of service convention (commonly the shipping date) applied the same way every time.

How long to keep them

Keep PODs — like the rest of your claim documentation — for seven years, and be able to retrieve any one of them quickly. "It's in a box at my old location" has cost suppliers real money.

The failure modes we actually see

• The undated signature. Signed, but no date — or dated by the driver a week later in a different pen. Treat an incomplete POD as missing.
• The generic ticket. "1 wheelchair" on a claim for a specific HCPCS code with specific options. Description must support what you billed.
• Resupply without a request. Auto-shipping CPAP or diabetic resupplies without a documented patient request creates claims with no valid basis — a POD can't rescue those.
• The retrieval gap. The paper exists but nobody can find it in under an hour. On survey day, can't-find and doesn't-exist are the same answer.

The five-minute system

One delivery ticket template with every required field pre-printed (including the instruction-given and home-safety lines). One rule: no signature, no delivery — no exceptions, including family members you've known for years. One filing convention: by month, matched to claims, whether that's a scanned folder or a drawer. Then a ten-claim self-audit once a quarter: pull ten recent claims, produce ten PODs, time yourself. That single habit makes both the surveyor and the auditor a non-event.

This guide is informational only and isn't legal advice. Requirements come from Medicare program documentation rules, the CMS DMEPOS Quality Standards, and your accreditor's standards; where they differ for your product mix, those sources control.