Healthcare industry doesn't want unique plan identifiers: WEDI

When Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996, it saw “administrative simplification” as a general benefit and specifically called for the adoption of several national numerical identifiers as a way to boost efficiency, reduce waste and control costs throughout the healthcare system. One such identifier would be for health insurance plans.

But the latest results from a broad survey of healthcare industry professionals by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange show little enthusiasm for using unique health plan identifiers, or HPIDs. WEDI itself has criticized plans to use HPIDs.

The survey found that 15% of the 262 representatives of payers, third-party administrators, providers, software vendors and claims clearinghouses in the WEDI survey, conducted in August and September, found any value in HPIDs, scheduled to be implemented later this year.

Only 24% of respondents indicated they have no concerns about implementing HIPDs at the same time as other mandates, such as ICD-10, scheduled for Oct. 1, 2015, and Stage 2 meaningful use, which is being implemented now.

More than half (51%) of respondents foresee the new HPID scheme adding “granularity,” that is, complexity, to their transactions while 39% were unsure what impact the HIPD implementation may have.

Using HPIDs in transactions, according to 55% of those surveyed, will carry as much or more complexity as the national provider identifier that was implemented with considerable difficulty for some providers six years ago.

WEDI CEO Devin Jopp said in a release that, “The findings of this latest survey really indicate that the industry has still not seen the value of placing HPID in the HIPAA transactions. This supports our recommendations to CMS from October 2013 that CMS require HPID enumeration but modify the rule to make HPIDs not used in transactions.”

The final rule for the HIPD was published in the Federal Register Sept. 5, 2012, and will become effective for all but small health plans Nov. 5. Small plans have until Nov. 5, 2015, to comply.

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