March 17, 2006

RE: Official Solicitation to participate in analysis of the Emergency Department Claims Attachment recently proposed in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the electronic claims attachments standard.  Specifically, HL7 is seeking your support in both analyzing the existing attachment and replying to NPRM comments related to it.

Dear ED Services Attachment Stakeholder:

Several years ago HL7 convened a group of interested industry stakeholders to define the appropriate content for use in this claims attachment.  This attachment was developed along with five others, and was offered to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the standard electronic ED attachment for consideration as the HIPAA standard. This standard attachment, once named in a Final Rule by HHS, will be available for use by all health care entities that utilize additional information to support a health care claim for ED services.

The NPRM for the electronic standard for claims attachments under HIPAA has been published in the Federal Register and the public comment period associated with it concluded January 23, 2006.  As comments are received by HHS they will be reviewed and those that are deemed appropriate for HL7 to assist in responding to will be forwarded to HL7.   

As part of HL7’s official NPRM comment preparation process we were advised by HL7 members that the ED attachment was in need of revisions and also that it may indeed not even be necessary for use in the claims payment cycle.  Based on HL7 member discussion and recommendation, we submitted an NPRM comment indicating that we need more time to analyze this attachment.  

HL7 seeks industry stakeholders to assist in analyzing the ED attachment in terms of its content (e.g. whether certain data are necessary for claims adjudication, whether they should be required in all cases, whether the data can only be reported once versus multiple times); as well as assessing the need for this attachment at all. It is our hope that individuals with these specific areas of expertise will support us in this effort. 

Because we will have a limited timeframe in which to conduct this analysis and return our responses to HHS, we are attempting to organize our subject - matter– specific teams now, and ask those who volunteer to stand by until you are notified shortly before we begin convening the meetings to review comments.  Our best guess at the time of this writing is that we could start convening this team sometime in mid - April

Those individuals who volunteer to help will be added to a list and contacted once we are ready to begin analysis.  We will provide some advance notice, but it may only be a week to 10-days or so. 

The attached information describes our work group protocols, past accomplishments, current objectives, and desired time frames.

Please email your contact information to HL7NPRM@... by March 31, 2006 to become a participant in the HL7 ED Attachment analysis and comment response team.  We ask that you also forward this request to your constituents, particularly if you are involved in an “association” or “committee” type of organization.

Sincerely,

HL7 Attachment Special Interest Group (ASIG) Co Chairs:

Maria Ward, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP

Wes Rishel, Gartner

Penny Sanchez, EDS