CMS to Require Dialysis Centers to Submit Clinical Data Online

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this month will start requiring all 5,500 federally certified dialysis centers in the U.S. to submit facility-wide and patient-level data electronically through its CROWNweb system, CMS official John Allison said during a Monday symposium at the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference, which takes place in Las Vegas this week.

CMS collaborated with the National Renal Administrators Association to enable dialysis centers to submit the data via the CONNECT Gateway to the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN), Allison said. The biggest dialysis chains--DaVita, Fresenius, and Dialysis Clinic Inc.--will transmit the data in batches via EDI, according to an article in Renal Business Today.

Among the data elements to be submitted are patient admission and discharge history, medical evidence report, death notification forms, patient attributes and related treatment, and clinical values for hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, and vascular access.