Washington State's Congressional Delegation Is Unanimous In Support Of Medicare Rule Changes For Nonprofit And Independent Dialysis Providers All Washington U.S. Senators and Representatives have joined in urging changes to rules for reporting dialysis patient data in Medicare’s new CROWNWeb system.
CROWNWeb stands for Consolidated Renal Operations in a Web Enabled Network. The federal project, scheduled to start Feb. 1, will require most dialysis providers like Northwest Kidney Centers to use new, time-consuming manual procedures to submit information. Three large national dialysis chains (two of them for-profit), on the other hand, may submit their data in computer-generated batches.
Northwest Kidney Centers and other smaller providers are capable of using that method, but instead are required to use a laborious, time-consuming process in which nurses and others enter data on each patient manually on a Web site. The cost to Northwest Kidney Centers alone would be $120,000 per year to submit information already available through existing computer systems.
CROWNWeb is part of the pay for quality program authorized by the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers Act of 2008, passed last summer.
Responding to the problem faced by NKC and others, Washington’s entire Congressional delegation—including Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and U.S. Reps. Brian Baird, Norm Dicks, Doc Hastings, Jay Inslee, Rick Larsen, Jim McDermott, Cathy McMorris-Rogers, Dave Reichert and Adam Smith—took action together. They signed a letter Dec. 23 asking questions of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) about the onerous implementation requirements. Their letter suggests that CMS re-think the way CROWNWeb will be implemented.
The Northwest Kidney Centers staff is extremely grateful to the Washington Congressional delegation for their support of dialysis providers who provide life-saving care. We stand willing to respond to more reasonable government approaches to collecting quality data.
For more info regarding the following go to
http://www.nwkidney.org/nkc/kidneyInformation/legislation.htmlRead the letter to CMS from Washington’s Congressional delegation
Read a letter to Senators about CROWNWeb from Northwest Kidney Centers CEO Joyce F. Jackson
Read more about the Medicare Improvement Act of 2008
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