Empire Medicare Services (EMS) hosted a Healthcare User Group meeting on February 23, 2006 via a Webinar. Twenty-six providers registered for the conference. The topic was Implementing 270/271 Eligibility Transactions via the Internet – New Electronic data Interchange Telecommunication Methods. This was presented by Victor Martin, Institutional EDI Senior Systems Analyst. Victor’s presentation is available at the following link:

http://www.empiremedicare.com/hug/Implementing_270_271.pdf

After the presentation, a brief Question and Answer session was held during which the following topics were discussed.

• There are three vendors currently offering eligibility software in addition toconnectivity to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for the HIPAA 270/271 eligibility inquiry and response transactions. Those vendors are IVANS, VisionShare, and McKesson. There are other vendors who offer eligibility software but only the three vendors listed above offer connectivity to CMS. Providers who currently utilize these vendors for connectivity to EMS can also use their connection to send their eligibility transactions to the CMS MDCN. Typically, these vendors require a provider to establish a separate account and or/purchase additional connectivity services in order to access the CMS MDCN.

• The 270/271 eligibility inquiry and response transactions are available only in real time. Batch submission is not available.

• The 271 response transaction returned from the CMS MDCN typically is received within a few seconds. Transactions exceeding a minute will receive a proprietary error message.

Page Last Modified: 05/26/06