GovLink
Additional Information: Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS)

On August 22, 2000, the Health Care Financing Administration posted, on its web
site (www.hcfa.gov/medlearn/opps3.doc), an important notice regarding systems
issues with the Outpatient PPS.  We have some additional information to make
available at this time and the August 22 web site notice will be updated shortly
to reflect this information. In the meantime, this new/revised information is as
follows:

In the August 22 notice, mention was made of a problem with the PC-PRINT
software, which prints electronic remittance advices (ERA's), in which the
PC-PRINT software was not printing the APC numbers on the remit. The ERA does
contain the APC number assigned at the line level, but when the files are run
through PC-PRINT, the APC is not printing. PC-PRINT was not initially designed
to show this information. However, HCFA is now working with the FISS standard
system maintainer to modify PC-PRINT to include the printing of the APC. This
change should be made no later than October 1.

Another problem has been detected in a small number of Medicare Summary Notices
that were generated by the FISS standard system. The charge information on these
notices is being overwritten by certain long descriptors for some HCPCS codes.
Again, this affects only small numbers of notices and this problem will be
corrected in the systems used by the fiscal intermediaries during the week of
September 11.

Another issue has been discovered regarding claims from Sole Community
Hospitals. The FISS standard system is not recognizing that some facilities are
Sole Community Hospitals. Claims from these systems are being suspended within
the system. These claims will be processed through the system as soon as a fix
is installed at the affected fiscal intermediaries during the week of September 4.

We hope this information will be useful to your organization.