PY2020 RADV records are due August 28. PY2024 audits start this month.

On March 20, 2026, CMS published Payment Year 2020 RADV audit methods and notified selected Medicare Advantage contracts. The medical-record window that document opened is now almost shut. CMS's PY2020 methods PDF lists the submission deadline as August 28, 2026, at 11:59pm EST, with hardship exception requests due September 11, 2026, at 11:59pm EST.

The same month, CMS's public RADV schedule says PY2024 audits are intended to initiate. That's the desk story this week: one year's records are due, and the next year on the calendar is not 2021.

The dates CMS actually published

Those dates come from CMS's Payment Year 2020 methods PDF, the Payment Year 2021 methods PDF, and the public RADV audit schedule published March 4, 2026. The schedule PDF says the dates are subject to change.

Two payment years are open at once

PY2021's window opened June 22 and runs through November 6. PY2020 still has to be in CDAT by August 28. If your shop codes for a contract in both samples, the next two weeks are not "finish 2020, then start 2024." They overlap.

CMS's schedule is also not calendar order. After PY2020 (March 2026) and PY2021 (May 2026), the next initiation on the public table is PY2024 in August 2026, then PY2023 in November 2026, PY2022 in January 2027, and PY2025 in April 2027.

What the PY2020 methods actually require

The data collection period for PY2020 is January 1, 2019, through December 31, 2019. A valid medical record, as CMS defines it in that PDF, is a legibly signed and dated record of a face-to-face visit by an appropriately credentialed provider in that window.

For each sampled enrollee, the plan may submit a maximum number of medical records equal to two times the number of audited HCCs. Three audited HCCs means six records, not unlimited chart dumps.

CMS states it designed the PY2020 contract-specific audits to support extrapolated recoveries, and that it has not decided whether it will make extrapolated recoveries or recover only the overpayments tied to sampled enrollees. That's CMS's wording in the methods PDF. It's not a finding that extrapolation will or will not apply.

What this is not

This isn't a new five-month-window announcement. CMS Watch already covered the January 27, 2026 HPMS memo that restored the five-month window and moved RADV toward all eligible contracts on a quarterly cadence. The new fact is the calendar position: the PY2020 clock is days from closing, and PY2024 is on the August initiation line.

It's also not a MEAT tutorial. If you need the documentation checklist, use the existing RADV schedule guide. The job this week is whether the 2019 encounter you plan to upload actually supports the audited HCC before CDAT closes. Run it against MEAT criteria if the note is thin, and confirm the submitted code in the encoder.

What to watch for PY2024 this month

Watch for an audit notice. Initiation on the public schedule is August 2026 and can move. The methods for that year are not the PY2020 PDF. Don't treat the August 28 PY2020 cutoff as the PY2024 deadline.