NEW HEALTH CARE STANDARDS TO SAVE UP TO $6 BILLION

Posted by National Health Index Medicare News Wednesday, September 5th, 2012

CMS Office of Public Affairs: Friday, August 24, 2012.
Today, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced a final rule that will save time and money for physicians and other health care providers by establishing a unique health plan identifier (HPID). The rule is one of a series of changes required by the Affordable Care Act to cut red tape in the health care system and will save up to $6 billion over ten years.

“These new standards are a part of our efforts to help providers and health plans spend less time filling out paperwork and more time seeing their patients,” Secretary Sebelius said.

Currently, when a health care provider bills a health plan, that plan may use a wide range of different identifiers that do not have a standard format.  As a result, health care providers run into a number of time-consuming problems, such as misrouting of transactions, rejection of transactions due to insurance identification errors, and difficulty determining patient eligibility.  The change announced today will greatly simplify these processes. Read more