ERE Questions and Responses

2

ERE Questions/Responses

OMB No. 0960-NEW

OMB Question 1 and SSA Response 1:

OMB Question: What percentage of medical providers currently keep their records in electronic format? I would imagine that most doctors still handwrite their clinical notes. How did SSA arrive at the 20,000 respondent estimate?  

SSA Response: There are varying estimates of the number of medical providers with electronic health records (EHR) systems. The industry consensus is that most EHRs are installed at large hospitals and medical centers.  The State Disability Determination Services employ over 30,000 providers of consultative examination (CE) services, and it is the DDS who estimate that about 20,000 of these respondents use electronic systems. 

OMB Follow-Up to Question 1 and SSA Response to Follow-Up

So the respondents for this ICR are the pool of 20,000 medical providers who already have a business relationship with SSA and already use electronic records? Providers who are not already in such a relationship would not use this ICR?

Correct. The ERE website is a choice being offered as an alternative to CE providers and MER providers who are faxing or sending paper copies to SSA’s scanning contractor. Please note that beneficiaries and their third-party representatives can submit upload medical evidence to ROCIS. This will be discussed in the second ICR for ROCIS (which we anticipate sending to OMB this week).

OMB Question 2 and SSA Response 2:

OMB Question: Are there plans to merge this ICR with 0960-0555 or else to merge the relevant parts of 0555 with this ICR? If not, why not? Would make sense to keep the paper version and electronic version bundled together since they are on the same schedule for renewal.  

Because 0960-0555 is not the only collection ERE will be used for (see Supporting Statement for a discussion of some of the other types of collections which will be grandfathered into ERE), it would not be appropriate to couple the registration process with 0960-0555. However, please note that when we recently submitted 0960-0555 for clearance, we did provide updated burden estimates which account for ERE submissions.

OMB Follow-Up to Question 2 and SSA Response to Follow-Up:

So this ICR is just for registration, while 0555 will continue to be used for tracking the burden associated with providing/transmitting the medical data, whether that transmission is done by paper or electronically?

This ICR is for registration, but not just for 0555. As we mentioned in the ICR supporting statement, other ICRs will have the capability to be uploaded to ROCIS, and the current ICR represents registration for all of those collections. As you stated, the burden associated with providing/transmitting the data will be accounted for in 0555 and the other ICRs.

OMB Question 3 and SSA Response 3:

OMB Question: It is not clear what information DDSs will actually collect during the phone conversation. What pages of the instruction guide are pertinent to the respondent (rather than DDS)? What will DDS fill out and what will respondent fill out?  

SSA Response: The DDSs are already in a business relationship with the medical providers and have almost all the information they need. Therefore, the only information they will need to collect during the phone conversation (possibly) is the respondent’s email address. They will also confirm the information they have on file.

OMB Follow-Up to Question 3 and SSA Response to Follow-Up:

What happens when a provider decides he/she wants to do CEs for SSA? All the respondents ALL providers who already are in a business relationship with SSA?

If we understand your question correctly, you are asking what procedures a medical provider would follow to become a CE for SSA. The burden associated with the recruitment of a new CE provider is covered by 0960-0555.

OMB Question 4 and SSA Response 4

OMB Question: On page 5 of the instruction manual, it would seem to make sense for an “error message” to appear only if the user ID already exists (rather than the converse, as SSA currently has it, which is to provide an “error message” when the user ID does not exist).  

SSA Response: This page is for SSA/DDS employees to use when setting up accounts. We just provided it since it is part of the complete reference manual. If you re-read this page, you will see that the SSA/DDS employee will input the User ID (which, you may recall, we pre-assigned to the respondent) to start the account creation process. If for some reason the User ID is not recognized by the system, we receive an error message. Because we pre-assign a User ID to respondents before starting the ERE registration process, it would be an error only if the system did not recognize the User ID.

OMB Follow-Up to Question 4 and SSA Response to Follow-Up

What happens when a provider decides he/she wants to do CEs for SSA?

Medical providers who wish to become CEs must go through the necessary certification process. This process is covered by 0960-0555. During the certification process, the DDSs collect all the information we would need to offer a CE enrollment in ERE.