The Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services (CMS) have announced the following:

CMS advises all NGHP RREs that the date for first production NGHP Input Files is changed from April 1, 2010 to January 1, 2011, effective immediately.

Read the complete announcement at the CMS website in “What’s New.”

This is clearly a welcome change and one that has been been sought by various industry organizations including the American Insurance Association. As Peter Foley, AIA’s VP for claims stated in a Business Insurance article released February 17, 2010 – “Pushing back the deadline is the right move, and I commend CMS for making this decision,”

The Medicare Advocacy Recovery Coalition (MARC) also applauded the decision to defer the reporting deadline for Section 111 as reported by the PR Newswire.

“The industry has been working diligently to build in infrastructure to supply data to CMS, investing millions of dollars to ensure compliance with the data share regulation.” said Roy Franco, co-chairperson of MARC and director of risk management services for Safeway Inc.  “Unfortunately, there have been unforeseen difficulties and unanswered questions regarding the reporting process, and everyone’s ability to get the job done by April 1.”

While there is still much to do, and questions to be answered, the additional time will hopefully allow those entities to get their processes in place.

This is by no means a reason to delay action as the fines for non-compliance are great.

(see my prior post: Warning – Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP): Government sends strong message and goes after non-compliance).