On Thursday, CMS announced that it will wait until March 31, 2012, to enforce compliance with HIPAA 5010 transaction sets, rather than enforcing the standards on Jan. 1, 2012, as originally planned, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 11/17).
Background
HIPAA 5010 standards regulate the transmission of certain health care transactions among hospitals, physician practices, health plans and claims clearinghouses.
Converting to the HIPAA 5010 standards is seen as key to the larger switch from the ICD-9 clinical coding system to the ICD-10 system (iHealthBeat, 11/2).
Details of the Announcement
CMS' decision comes after health care industry stakeholders expressed concern that they would not be prepared to start using the standards by Jan. 1, 2012 (Modern Healthcare, 11/17).
Although CMS' Office of E-Health Standards and Services will not begin enforcing the HIPAA 5010 standards until March, it stated that the compliance date will remain Jan. 1, 2012.
OESS said it "encourages all covered entities to continue working with their trading partners to become compliant with the new HIPAA standards and to determine their readiness to accept the new standards as of Jan. 1, 2012."
The office added that it will accept complaints related to noncompliance with the standards during the 90-day period starting Jan. 1, 2012. If requested by OESS, covered entities that receive noncompliance complaints will need to produce evidence of compliance or of an effort to become compliant during the 90-day period (Goedert, Health Data Management, 11/17).