If you thought Highmark Medicare Services (HMS) was taking over as your new Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) next year, not so fast.

TrailBlazer Health Enterprises, which was set to lose its four-state Southwest jurisdiction to HMS, protested the MAC Jurisdiction H transition to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), leading the GAO to issue a stop work order to HMS on Nov. 28.

What this means for you: If you reside in Jurisdiction 4 or 7 – both set to transition over to HMS – you will continue to bill your current MACs until the GAO issues a ruling on the protest. The GAO must rule by March 1, 2012 at the latest.

We report in the current issue of Part B News that you could get a revalidation notice from CMS this year, even for providers who already have recordsin the agency’s Provider Enrollment Chain Ownership System (PECOS).

Remember: CMS had previously said no providers with existing PECOS records would get revalidation notices until January 2012, when a big “wave” of notices would be sent out. The culprits are active provider transaction account numbers (PTANs), which cause the revalidations to be sent when they are on file with a Medicare contractor but not listed in a provider’s PECOS record, CMS has said. Now the agency has answered some questions about the PTAN and revalidation issue.

Most of your peers are happy with their Medicare contractors, but Part B contractors scored lower than other types, especially for enrollment as a business function, according to the latest 2011 Medicare Contractor Provider Satisfaction Survey (MCPSS). Overall, the average score for provider performance was 3.77 out of 5.00, or about 75.4%. The results for 2011 have changed little from 2010, according to the executive summary of the survey, which is commissioned annually by CMS.

The next time you get a request for records from your carrier or recovery audit contractor (RAC), you would be able to send it electronically under a new CMS pilot program. The Electronic Submission of Medical Documentation (esMD) lets you send any requested record as a PDF document, which typically means you scan or convert the required documents into PDFs. This could reduce the time it takes to meet a records request, although you will probably need to go through your claims clearinghouse to submit information via esMD.

CMS has designated June 15 as National Testing Day to ensure your practice will be HIPAA 5010 compliant come January 2012.

The decision came as a response to the Medical Group Management Association’s (MGMA) letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from October 2010.

“Designating a national testing period in advance of the compliance date will focus the industry’s attention to prepare internal systems for the move to Version 5010 and begin testing electronic transactions with trading partners,” MGMA wrote in its letter.