Healthcare industry observers have begun to recognize that the May, 2007 date for National Provider Identifier (NPI) implementation will be missed. The electronic transactions that flow between payers and providers may be slowed, and payment cycles may be compromised. Many healthcare organizations are not prepared to manage the costs and risks to business operations.

Good contingency planning strategies could help minimize business disruptions. Healthcare IT Transition Group has announced training in NPI contingency planning to help lessen the impact. A web-based seminar, to be held April 10 and repeated April 12, is now open for registration at http://hittransition.com/flashpoint/npibc .

Regulators at CMS have been slow to acknowledge what industry observers have seen for some time: Compliance with the NPI Final Rule cannot be achieved unless providers are fully enumerated and the entire industry has access to the data necessary to populate and validate electronic transactions. More than three years since CMS stated that its NPI dissemination policy would be “described in detail at a later date,” the language finally cleared the agency and was sent to OMB for final review in February of this year. That’s just too late for providers and payers to populate their databases, test the transactions and make necessary adjustments to their systems and processes. Major health plans have already announced they will miss the deadline.

Healthcare providers, health plans and their trading partners have come to realize they must act now to develop their own contingency plans, positioned to dovetail with Federal guidance, if and when it becomes available. A good contingency plan should document both internal and external realities, establish triggers based on solid metrics, and define a rational, low-cost strategy for the transition to NPI.

The webinar is designed for health IT managers, NPI project leadership, compliance officers, regulatory advisors, corporate counsel, and others involved in either the switch to NPI, or in "keeping the trains running ontime" during the transition.

Martin Jensen, a national authority on NPI, will lead the sessions. Mr. Jensen is directly involved in NPI remediation projects in state Medicaid, vendor and payer organizations. His sixteen years in healthcare IT include recent work in provider taxonomy research and provider outreach, and over fourteen years in business analysis and project management for provider organizations. He currently co-chairs the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) Business Issues and Health ID Card sub-workgroups, and participated in the development of version 5010 of the X12N 837 electronic claim transactions. He has been honored with the WEDI Award of Merit for his leadership. As a HIPAA Project Manager for a provider that was ready for HIPAA transactions compliance, Marty had to work with trading partners and vendors who lagged behind. Marty has on-the-ground experience implementing NPI, working with providers, payers and vendors, and has been privately engaged by key players in the industry to advise them and their clients.

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 makers and technical services companies, and some of the nation’s largest health plans.

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