By Kasia Michalik
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has "softened" the November 30 deadline for CROWNWeb patient data submissions due to certain technical challenges, as well as Hurricane Sandy.
November 30 came faster than expected and although the deadline is still set for November 30 for the months of May, June, July and August, submitting records after the target date is permitted.
Data Period |
CROWNWeb Submission Target Date |
May 2012 |
November 2012 |
June 2012 |
November 2012 |
July 2012 |
November 2012 |
August 2012 |
November 2012 |
September 2012 |
January 2013 |
October 2012 |
January 2013 |
Also, keep in mind that the December deadline has been shifted to January 2013, so for September and October the submission date is January 31, 2013.
The staff at CMS want the data to be as complete as possible and they feel that softening the original submission deadline will help dialysis facilities to complete everything with better quality. CMS plans to take a snapshot of the data first Monday of each month to assess the submission progress.
"We intend to provide feedback to the dialysis community regarding the analysis findings and the status of data submission," Teresa Casey director, division of ESRD population and community health quality improvement group for CMS wrote in a November 21 letter.
An update will be given when there will be an official submission date.
In addition, the National Renal Administrators Association (NRAA) Health Information Exchange (HIE) has had some bumps in the road due to the CMS infrastructure. Currently, CMS is working to improve the bandwidth of the system so more CROWNWeb data can be pushed through to CMS.
In regards to relaxing the submission deadline, the NRAA made a statement saying, "This is helpful as we all work out the processes in reporting. Be advised that the January target date is increasingly important and that the reports from this dataset will be more accurate and have more uses across the industry."
