Home Health & Hospice Week

Remember that switch over to Multi-Factor Authentication for the PECOS system? You’ll have a few extra days to deal with it after New Year’s.

Old: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said earlier this fall it would “implement Multi-Factor Authen­tication (MFA) for the Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System (PECOS) on January 3, 2022.” Providers were supposed to get “a 60-day grace period to set up MFA,” with “the grace period countdown start[ing] with a user’s first login after January 3,” according to CMS. By April 21, all users must be using MFA to access PECOS.

New: CMS has delayed implementing PECOS MFA until Jan. 10, 2022, the agency says in a new message to providers. The 60-day grace period and April 21 deadline have stayed the same, though.

Some good news is that “PECOS will use the same MFA methods as the Identity & Access Management System (I&A),” CMS notes. “Users who have set up MFA in I&A won’t need to do additional setup for MFA in PECOS,” the agency advises.

Tip: “If you work on behalf of other providers, be sure to enable the appropriate surrogacy connections,” CMS instructs. More information is at https://nppes.cms.hhs.gov/IAWebContent/Quick_Reference_Guide.pdf.