On Sept. 9, the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) uploaded three new hospital-directed payment encounter files, available via the Secure File Transfer Protocol site. It is important for hospitals to download these files as soon as possible, as the site is only intended for file transfers, not ongoing storage, and uploaded files will be deleted within 45 days.
The files include:
- Calendar Year 2021 Phase 1 (Jan. 1-June 30, 2021, service dates). The name of the file will be Name_CY2021P1
- Calendar Year 2021 Phase 2 (July 1-Dec. 31, 2021, service dates). The name of the file will be Name_CY2021P2
- Calendar Year 2022 Phase 1 (Jan. 1-June 30, 2022, service dates). The name of the file will be Name_CY2022P1
Three updates were made to the files that may impact any internal automation or macros used to process a hospital’s data files:
- The location of the Prov_274 field was moved to the end of the data set.
- The field Hospital_Type was added to all data sets.
- The spelling of the field Aidcodegroup was changed to AidCdGroup. This update only applies to the Encounter Detail files released in conjunction with the Payment Exhibits.
Please note, for the Calendar Year 2021 Phase 1 (Jan. 1-June 30, 2021) encounter file, DHCS is requiring all contract flagging status to be submitted by Friday, Oct. 14. This will be the final opportunity for plans to work with providers to appropriately identify contract status. DHCS expects hospitals to work with plans to address and attempt to resolve disagreements about contract status. As always, CHA encourages hospitals to reach out to their plan partners to understand the plan’s internal deadlines, as they will be earlier than the DHCS deadline noted above.
DHCS also released the following tentative schedule for future directed payment data releases: