CMS narrows timetable for practitioners database

WASHINGTON Medicare’s database of practitioners will go online earlier next year, and it will allow providers to enroll electronically, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced.

The agency plans to put its Provider Enrollment, Chain and Ownership System online and extend it to 47 states, with exception to New York, California and Missouri, which will have access to it starting Oct. 1 of next year.

CMS also proposed ceasing to allow providers to bill it for services provided more than two years before enrollment, a proposal the Medical Group Management Association called “draconian and punitive.”