NPI Guidance for the Healthcare Industry

(PRLEAP.COM) A series of authoritative educational sessions for health IT leaders is tackling the National Provider Identifier (NPI) challenge. The U.S. healthcare industry is facing a major technological challenge over the coming months. The NPI Final Rule mandates the vast majority of US hospitals, physicians and clinics obtain the new ID numbers and use them in electronic claims and other administrative transactions by May 23, 2007. More significantly, the regulation forbids the use of proprietary identifiers, including Medicare IDs (UPIN and OSCAR numbers), state license numbers and Medicaid IDs.

This transition has a profound impact on systems, operations and external relationships for providers, health plans and the software vendors that support them. The industry’s response has been slow, due in part to a lack of provider awareness and the subtle complexities presented by the seemingly simple rule.

A webinar series is being offered to help ease the transition and assist affected organizations in getting quickly up to speed. One of the nation’s leading NPI authorities, Martin Jensen of Healthcare IT Transition Group, is the key facilitator of the web-based seminars.

Several differently-targeted approaches are being offered. One of the seminars, titled “NPI Regulations & Realities,” is an overview of the federal NPI regulation and describes how healthcare organizations at the forefront of the effort are approaching the challenge. The seminar goes beyond a basic overview and examines recent industry developments and sticky issues such as provider taxonomy (physician specialty or facility types), privacy concerns and access to the master NPI list. These sessions are directed at providers, payers and healthcare software makers in an approach suitable for both non-technical and technical people.

Another offering, titled "Decoding Provider Taxonomy: A Pragmatic Approach for Providers, Payers and their Partners," explains the use of provider taxonomy codes in NPI crosswalks — a powerful tool in the NPI transition.

A third topic, "NPI Business Continuity Planning," offers a practical guide to hardening organizations against the coming confusion following the May NPI deadline, designed to help keep transactions flowing and pay cycles running. Still other topics are planned, including a session on the upcoming NPI data dissemination policy from CMS.

Webinar registration is available online at http://hittransition.com/flashpoint . The training is being developed by Healthcare IT Transition Group and offered through Flash Point Health IT Seminars. Facilitator Martin Jensen works in healthcare technology implementation and national information technology policy research, and currently co-chairs the national Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) business issues and health ID card efforts. Jensen participated in the development of the new version of the electronic claim standards soon to be adopted across the nation.

Additional information is available at http://hittransition.com/flashpoint .

Healthcare IT Transition Group is a health technology and policy consultancy that works with the U.S. healthcare industry to reduce the cost and improve the quality of healthcare through the use of information technology. The company’s clients include healthcare providers large and small, healthcare industry software and technical services companies, and some of the nation’s largest health plans.

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