Practice Management Alert

Grace period doesn't mean you should relax -- continue your deadline prep.If your practice is sweating over the fact that your 5010 standard won't be in place by the Jan. 1 deadline, CMS has an early holiday gift for you. In a Nov. 17 announcement, CMS stated that it will not initiate enforcement action regarding 5010 until March 31, 2012.Don't Get Complacent, HoweverNot a deadline shift: CMS stresses in its statement that the 5010 compliance date remains Jan. 1, 2012. However, the agency will not penalize practices that aren't using 5010 until after the new 90-day "discretionary enforcement period" ends in March, as long as practices can demonstrate that they are working toward 5010 use."If requested, covered entities that are the subject of complaints must produce evidence of either compliance or a good faith effort to become compliant with the new HIPAA standards during the 90-day period," CMS says in its [...]