eHealth spotlight: 2012 timeline for eHealth implementation
December 2011
The Medical Society of Virginia (MSV) has compiled a list of important dates and deadlines concerning eHealth activities occurring in 2012. For comprehensive information, please see the MSV
eHealth knowledgebase.
Dec. 31, 2011: A penalty was introduced for 2011 that will affect Medicare payments in 2012 and 2013. To avoid the 2012 penalty, physicians had to submit a minimum 10 eRx reporting events during Jan. 1, 2011-June 30, 2011. To avoid the 2013 penalty, an additional 15 eRx reporting events must occur for a total of 25 eRx reporting events that must be reported before Dec. 31, 2011.
Jan. 1, 2012: The deadline to successfully implement the new HIPAA electronic transaction standard, known as version 5010 transactions is Jan. 1, 2012. This applies only to physician practices that electronically submit administrative transactions to payers.
Feb. 29, 2012: This is the cut-off date for eligible professionals to register and attest to receive 2011 incentive payments.
First half of 2012: The Virginia Medicaid EHR portal opens in the first half of 2012 and eligible professionals will be able to register for Year 1 Medicaid incentive payments (requires adoption/implementation/upgrade of a certified EHR system).
Oct. 1, 2012: If 2012 is the first year you participated in the Medicare EHR incentive program, this is the last day to begin the 90-day reporting period for Meaningful Use for calendar year 2012.
Ongoing in 2012: To make sure that your practice is prepared for the ICD-10-CM conversion that is taking place on Oct. 1, 2013, your practice should be doing the following throughout 2012:
- Talk to your clearinghouses, billing service and payers about when their ICD-10-CM upgrades will be complete and ready to test
- Budget for time and costs related to ICD-10-CM implementation and assess the costs for all necessary software updates
- Identify the coding and reporting changes that will need to be made in your practice to convert to the ICD-10-CM set
- Identify the training needs among billers, coders and clinical staff and make sure the necessary training is completed
- Conduct internal and external testing to make sure transactions can be generated with the ICD-10-CM codes