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The two-year compliance clock begins ticking 60 days after the final adoption date and all covered entities must comply by October 2002.
NORWELL, MA (August 14, 2000) - The final rules set the stage for sweeping changes across the health care industry to gain administrative savings through standardization and simplification of electronic health care transactions. The final rules require health plans, providers, and clearinghouses exchanging electronic administrative health care transactions to implement ASC X12 standards for health claims, referral certification/authorizations, claim status inquiries, eligibility requests/responses, remittance advices, and health benefit enrollment/disenrollment. Additionally, the final rules require retail drug claims to comply with the NCPDP standard for batch or telecommunication claims using version 1.0 or 5.1 respectively. Finally, the rules require utilization of ICD-9-CM, CPT, CDT, NDC, and HCPCS coding standards. Local codes are disallowed and redundant codes eliminated.
"With the long anticipated adoption of these final rules, health care organizations are well advised to accelerate preparations in earnest," said Tom Hanks, Practice Director, Enterprise Security and HIPAA Compliance, Beacon Partners. "HIPAA is an enterprise-wide event affecting not only EDI and IT concerns, but also has substantial ramifications on business and operational concerns".
"Some organizations have already undertaken education and assessment activities to better understand the impact of HIPAA," according to Jim Klein, Manager, Enterprise Security and HIPAA compliance, Beacon Partners. "There are many that have not initiated planning and preparation activities and with the clock now ticking, it is imperative that organizations develop a sense of urgency to avoid future expense, risk and penalties".
Recent updates from government officials indicate the remaining HIPAA standards are being prepared for publication later this year, which includes security, privacy, employer and provider unique identifiers, and draft standards for claim attachments.
Publication of the final rules is scheduled for August 17, 2000 and will be available from the Government's HIPAA website at http://aspe.hhs.gov/admnsimp/index.htm and the Federal Register. The HIPAA transaction implementation guides are now available for free download from the Washington Publishing website at http://www.wpc-edi.com/hipaa/. Additional HIPAA information can be found at http://www.HIPAAcomply.com.
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Beacon Partners is a national health care management consulting firm with offices in Boston and Chicago serving over one hundred healthcare facilities in the United States. Since 1989, the consultants of Beacon Partners have provided healthcare organizations with a wide range of client-focused consulting services, including strategic planning, business operations management, clinical solutions, information systems and technical solutions. Beacon Partners is a recognized leader in the HIPAA arena with over fours years of HIPAA experience, including numerous educational and HIPAA assessment engagements. Beacon provides a full range of services for HIPAA compliance from initial education and assessment through remediation, implementation and on-going monitoring. Beacon's HIPAA experts have contributed to the underpinnings of the HIPAA regulations and are sought by many industry organizations to address HIPAA's scope and implications on healthcare. To learn more about Beacon Partners, call 1-800-4BEACON.
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