EXTENSION TO PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD FOR THE PROPOSED RULE: ELECTRONIC HEALTH CARE CLAIMS ATTACHMENTS (CMS 0050).
Today, November 21, 2005, The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) displayed notice of a 60 day extension to the comment period for the proposed rule titled: “HIPAA Administrative Simplification: Electronic Health Care Claims Attachments.” The notice will be published on November 22, 2005. The public comment period will now close on January 23, 2006. Due to the highly technical nature of materials, the size (length) of the 10 documents being reviewed, and the importance of ensuring their accuracy and usefulness to the industry, we wish to provide additional time for review and comment. During the initial comment period, the industry requested additional time to conduct a more comprehensive and through review of the proposed standards, in order to provide comments to HHS and to the Standards Development Organizations (SDOs).
The September 23, 2005 proposed rule recommends the adoption of a set of standards that will facilitate the electronic exchange of clinical and administrative data to further improve the claims attachment adjudication process when additional documentation is required. There are two X12N transaction standards to be used: one to request the information, and one to respond to that request with the answers or additional information. This rule also proposes the use of Health Level 7 (HL7) specifications for the content and format of communicating the actual clinical information. Finally, this rule proposes the adoption of the Logical Observation Identifiers, Names and Codes or LOINC® for specific identification of the additional information being requested, and the coded answers that respond to the requests.
The proposed rule can be found at:
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20051800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/pdf/05-18927.pdf

The technical materials can be found at www.wpc-edi.com
For further information contact Lorraine Tunis Doo at 410-786-6597.