The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has developed a free service to help physician practices of varying sizes and documentation workloads upload and submit medical documents, including prior authorization requests, electronically.
The CMS Health Information Handler supports physicians with the exchange and submission of an unlimited number of medical documents. These include documents submitted to Medicare administrative contractors through:
- Portable document format (PDF);
- Extensible markup language (XML); and
- JavaScript object notation (JSON).
The tool, hosted on CMS’ Amazon Web Services Cloud, adheres to all CMS security and privacy standards, and intends to help physicians secure approvals for services, attach medical records, and check prior authorization approval status.
Per CMS, the Health Information Handler can serve any organization that wants to send medical documentation to the agency, ranging from an individual clinician or small practice sending a one-time document or small amounts of monthly transactions, to large organizations sending hundreds of documents a month.
To utilize the handler tool, users must enter into a service agreement with CMS, perform testing, and obtain credentials with tool support during use and throughout the transaction submission process. Currently, no information technology expertise is required to use the tool.
“This tool is meant to facilitate the electronic uploading of medical documentation for Medicare,” said Shannon Vogel, the Texas Medical Association’s associate vice president of health information technology. “We’re hopeful that by doing so, it will reduce the burden of documentation submission.”
For more information on utilizing the tool, practices can email CMS.
For help with health information exchange, visit TMA’s Health Information Technology page.
Alisa Pierce
Reporter, Division of Communications and Marketing
(512) 370-1469