A new Interim Final Rule is expected to make doctors' electronic fund transfers easier and less costly.
We are now another step closer to an entirely paperless healthcare business world, as HHS released a new set of operating rules that will require health plans to streamline the electronic fund transfer (EFT) and electronic remittance advice (ERA) process. The rule is expected to go live on Jan. 1, 2014.
Like HHS' previous Interim Final Rule on EFTs and ACHs, it is largely technical and aims to let practices make online financial transa
ctions without jeopardizing their HIPAA compliance.
The Rule is also supposed to make it simpler for physician practices and hospitals to take part in EFTs, and save $9 billion in administrative costs.
Many of you still prefer paper, due to various hiccups in the process. These operating rules should address this -- by, for instance, requiring health plans to "offer a standardized, online enrollment for EFT and ERA so that physician practices and hospitals can more easily enroll with multiple health plans to receive those transactions electronically," HHS says in its press release. Health plans will also have to “send the EFT within a certain number of days of the ERA."