Join this Initiative

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Please note: Once you register, it may take a few days for your name to appear on the members list due to periodic heavy volume of registrants.

As an open government initiative of the S&I Framework, the success of the esMD Initiative relies on the participation of a wide range of stakeholders, including various Payer and Provider organizations, health systems, standards development organizations, and the general public.

Initiative Value Statement

The value of the esMD Initiative will be to provide consensus-based use cases, functional requirements, standards and implementation specifications representing combined input from a broad range of stakeholders, including CMS, commercial payers, providers, and vendors. This will promote a nationally standardized approach to medical document request letters, claims attachments, and the proof of authorship of medical documentation.

The outputs of this initiative will ultimately be implemented by CMS, in the implementations of esMD Phase 2, 3 and other future releases. CMS implementations stemming from this initiative will also test provider directories and consolidated CDA solutions in a real world setting. It is intended that the outputs and implementations of this Initiative could be reused outside of CMS, such as within the Payer community. This initiative also benefits national interoperability by expanding the health IT infrastructure to incorporate and validate signatures as part of structured documents.

Both payers and providers will benefit from this Initiative’s implementation of electronic medical document request letters and claims attachments. Some of the benefits of replacing the current paper process with an electronic option include:

• Saving time, money and resources for CMS/Payers and Providers
• Eliminates print/mail operations required for sending or processing medical documentation request letters
• Eliminates need for postage costs
• Increases the accuracy of the information requested and received
• Improved receipt time for both providers and payers
• Improved timeliness results in improved accounts receivable cycle for provider, so payments are received sooner
• Reduced staff time spent handling paper

Initiative Background

The purpose of the S&I Framework esMD initiative is to enable the electronic sending of medical document request letters to providers, and identify author-level signature solutions needed to enable acceptance of electronic claims attachments. These goals will be addressed in multiple phases, aligned with CMS esMD Implementation objectives. The S&I Framework will support CMS’ esMD Phase 2 goals by developing simplified mechanisms to electronically send medical document request letters to providers. To support acceptance of structured claims attachments from providers to CMS (future esMD phase), the S&I Framework esMD Initiative will also develop solutions to enable signing of content records that can be trusted by CMS or other valid recipients, replacing the currently-used paper or scanned wet signatures.

Milestones to Date

3/19/2012 - Achieved consensus on esMD Provider Profile Authentication and Provider Registration Use Case & Functional Requirements
5/30/2012 - Achieved consensus on esMD Use Case 2 - Secure Transportation and Structured Content of Electronic Medical Documentation Requests (eMDRs)
9/20/2012 - Acheived consensus on esMD Use Case 3- Author of Record Level 1: Digital Identities and Submission Level Signatures Use Case