July 8, 2014—The Health Resources and Services Administration says it believes it has resolved technical issues that prevented hospitals using older versions of the Internet Explorer web browser from registering parent and child sites in 340B due to their browser’s incompatibility with HRSA’s revamped hospital registration interface.[ms-protect-content id=”2799″]
HRSA is recommending that hospitals use these web browsers to register: Internet Explorer 9 or higher, Firefox, and Chrome. “If hospitals are still having problems registering, they are encouraged to call Apexus at 1-888-340-2787 and we will work with them to get their facility registered,” a HRSA spokesperson said.
Reports of the glitch began soon after the July 1-15 quarterly registration period opened. On June 30, HRSA’s Office of Pharmacy Affairs announced on its website that, through a new data feed with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), most hospitals would no longer have to submit Medicare cost report worksheets and trial balances by email or fax for review as part of the registration process. Instead, OPA computers would pull that information from CMS computers and auto-fill it in the appropriate fields in the online registration form. If the auto-filled information does not match what the hospital has on hand, it must submit Medicare cost report worksheets A and C from the hospital’s most recently filed cost report and the associated working trial balance. As before, a hospital must submit all supplemental documentation to OPA by email or fax on the same day as it completes the registration process. OPA also now requires that, when submitting supplemental documentation via email, hospitals must include their Medicare provider number in the subject line of initial communications as well as in all follow-up emails.
Hospitals whose computers are configured to run Internet Explorer as their web browser reported being unable to use the new registration system due to problems with the auto-fill feature.[/ms-protect-content]