Attention SNFs: All MDS 3.0 and CASPER systems to be offline for 5+ days in March.
We have learned from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that all of the national QIES systems will be taken offline for an extended off-schedule maintenance period, currently scheduled to begin on Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2016 at 8:00 p.m. ET and end on Monday, March 21, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. ET. (You can read the CMS announcement here.)
Note to customers: You can continue your MDS workflow as usual.
During the downtime, SimpleLTC customers can continue to produce MDS batches and submit them within SimpleMDS™ as usual, either via the auto-uploader or manually. We will hold the batches until the CMS system becomes available again and transmit them at that time. Note that final validations and CASPER reports will not be available until CMS is back online.
Other SimpleLTC software functions that do not require CMS connectivity (such as SimpleAnalyzer™ and SimpleCFS™), will remain available as usual.
We will continue to communicate with CMS about the planned maintenance window and will provide more information to customers as it becomes available. If you have questions about how this may affect your workflow, please contact our SimpleLTC Support Team.
6 Comments on “All CMS QIES systems to be offline, Mar. 16-21”
So your system will not continue to sweep for batches during this time? From what i just read, the best course of action is to just not attempt to transmit during this time period, correct?
Hi Terese. During the downtime, you can continue to produce MDS batches and submit them within SimpleMDS as you usually do (either manually or using the auto-upload functionality). We will hold the batches and submit them to CMS as soon as their system is available again. This way there’s no downtime for your workflow. (But obviously final validations and related reports won’t be available until CMS is back online.)
Will this affect LTCMI and PL1 submissions?
Hi Rachel — no, this will not affect any Texas Medicaid processes (LTCMI, PL1, MESAV). It only applies to MDS submissions to CMS.
Will we be able to do 3618/3619’s? Will this affect Medicaid billing?
Hi Marilyn — Texas forms are not affected, so you can continue submitting 3618s, 3619s, PL1s, LTCMIs and MCO forms as usual. The downtime only affects MDS forms and CASPER reports that require the CMS QIES portal.