The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is proposing to rescind the standard unique health plan identifier (HPID) and the other entity identifier (OEID), along with related implementation specifications and requirements for their use.
HHS adopted the HPID and OEID in a September 5, 2012 final rule, but HHS announced a delay in enforcement of the regulations in 2014. While the rule was intended to improve the utility of the existing HIPAA transactions and reduce administrative burdens, concerns subsequently emerged from the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS) and industry regarding the utility and costs of this framework. In particular, HHS notes that industry has developed best practices for use of Payer IDs for purposes of conducting HIPAA transactions, but the "HPID does not have a place in these transactions, and from industry's perspective, does not facilitate administrative simplification." Instead, HHS believes "it would likely be a costly, complicated, and burdensome disruption for the industry to have to implement the HPID because it would require mapping existing Payer IDs to the new HPIDs, which would likely result in the misrouting of claims and other transactions." HHS intends to consider "options for a more effective standard unique health plan identifier in the future" with input from industry.
HHS will accept comments on the proposal until February 19, 2019.
This article is presented for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.