May 2006 Newsletter

CMS Notice – Suppression of Standard Paper Remittance (SPR)

By: Quality Assurance Specialist

CMS has announced (Change Request #4376) that effective June 1, 2006, Medicare carriers and DMERCs will stop mailing SPR advices to those providers (or billing agent, clearinghouse, or other entity representing the provider) also receiving an Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA) for 45 days or more. Any provider not currently receiving ERA that subsequently signs up to receive it will also lose the SPR 45 days after the first ERA is received.

CMS has developed software, called Medicare Remit Easy Print (MREP), that gives providers a tool to view and print an ANSI 835 ERA in a readable format locally on their computers. The MREP software allows providers to print remittance information for individual or multiple selected claims, as well as print several useful reports. Currently the raw 835 data that this software uses is converted for HARP clients to the HARP posting records format, used for HARP remittance posting and creating EOBs. We are in the process of adding access to the raw 835 in HARP and anticipate having the necessary data for the MREP software available for our HARP clients to use in the near future.