Health Information Compliance Alert

Ready for HIPAA 5010 Requirements? Providers already should be in Level I compliance, notes the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on its website. That means "that a covered entity can demonstrably create and receive compliant transactions, resulting from the compliance of all design/build activities and internal testing."

By Dec. 31, providers must be in Level II compliance, meaning "that a covered entity has completed end-to-end testing with each of its trading partners, and is able to operate in production mode with the new versions of the standards," CMS says.

By Jan. 1, 2012, all providers must be in full compliance with the HIPAA 5010 regulations. More information on 5010 is at www.cms.gov/ElectronicBillingEDITrans/18_5010D0.asp. You can register for a March 30 5010 education call by CMS at www.eventsvc.com/palmettogba/033011.

Follow '180-Day Rule' to Keep Your Medicare IACS Account Active. The transition from paper Medicare registration to electronic enrollment has not been entirely seamless, but once you've got an enrollment record in PECOS and you register in the IACS system, you may think your work is done. Think again.

To access certain types of online data about your practice, including your Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) reports, you'll require an IACS (Individuals Authorized Access to the CMS Computer Services) account. And then once you're registered in IACS, you'll need to log back in every 180 days or more often, or else CMS will automatically disable your account.

That's the word from CMS's November document, "IACS User Guide for CMS Communities," which profiles everything you need to know about being an IACS user. The guide also reinforces the fact that you must certify your IACS account annually, and the system will email you 45 days before your due date to ensure that you don't miss the certification process.

To read the IACS Guide, visit www.cms.gov/MAPDHelpDesk/downloads/IACS_User_Guide_for_CMS_User_Communities_2010_03.pdf.