Members of the Healthcare Administrative Simplification Coalition are encouraging Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt to adopt the Universal Credentialing Datasource® to streamline health plan credentialing application requirements. UCD allows physicians and other health professionals to post to a secure, national database any credentialing and demographic information that health plans, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations require.
In a letter to Leavitt, HASC members, including HFMA, pointed out that since its 2002 launch, UCD has saved nearly $50 million in administrative costs and eliminated more than 1.25 million legacy paper applications. The letter suggested that UCD could be a valuable tool for online provider enrollment and updates with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for Medicare revalidation, and for disseminating national provider identifier information from Medicare and Medicaid providers to payers. UCD was developed by the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare.
