Healthcare Financial News

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced May 30 that Medicare fee for service (FFS) has made more progress over the past week since fully implementing the National Provider Identifier (NPI) than the agency expected, with most of the Medicare contractors reporting that over 90 percent of claims are NPI-compliant, with some reporting 100 percent compliance.

CMS clarified that, on May 23, there were a number of rejections for claims with legacy numbers in the secondary provider identifier field. “We are seeing this particular issue rapidly improve,” said the agency in a statement, “as more providers realize the need for NPI-only in secondary identifier fields.” To assist those billing providers that are still unable to obtain NPIs for secondary providers, Medicare has instituted a temporary measure that allows billing providers to use their own NPI in secondary identifier fields.

CMS is also reminding Medicare providers who may be experiencing cash flow problems related to NPI claims processing issues that they should contact their Medicare contractor to determine if they are eligible for an advance or accelerated payment. Read the NPI fact sheet.

In response to survey data showing that the next generation of nurses may not be prepared to work in a technology-rich informatics environment, the National League for Nursing (NLN) has issued a position statement calling on faculty, deans, administrators, and the NLN itself to advocate that all students graduate with up-to-date knowledge and skills in computer literacy, information literacy, and informatics.

The genesis of the NLN position statement, Preparing the Next Generation of Nurses to Practice in a Technology-rich Environment: An Informatics Agenda, was a recent survey of faculty and nursing education administrators conducted by the NLN’s Informatics Competencies Task Group of the Educational Technology and Information Management Advisory Council. Results revealed that approximately 60 percent of programs had a computer literacy requirement and 40 percent had an information literacy requirement. Only 50 percent to 60 percent of respondents said that informatics was integrated into the curriculum and that clinical experience with information systems was provided during clinical experiences. The critical conclusion is that while most schools of nursing focused on computer and information literacy, there was considerable confusion as to what nursing informatics entails and what constitutes the necessary knowledge to practice in an informatics-rich environment. Read the position statement.

Voting is now open for Modern Healthcare magazine’s seventh annual 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare recognition program. HFMA president and CEO Richard L. Clarke, DHA, FHFMA, has made the list each of the past six years. The magazine reports that more than 14,600 nominations were submitted this year, compared with about 12,600 last year.

Click here to cast your vote for Dr. Clarke and other leaders worthy of this recognition. You must vote for 10 of the 300 names on the ballot. Voting will continue through June 27, and the final ranking will be published in the Aug. 25 issue of Modern Healthcare.