PBJ Update: Employee Hire and Termination Dates Now Optional

Recently CMS released an updated file specification for PBJ submissions.  The major change to the Payroll-Based Journal requirements is that employee hire and termination dates are now optional. CMS hopes that this change will improve a provider’s ability to successfully submit their PBJ report. 

Specifically, CMS has stated:

We are aware that some vendors and providers had difficulty submitting hire, termination, and rehire data for employees. An updated errata V2.00.3 has been posted for the PBJ Data Submission Specifications V2.00.0 and is now available in the download section below. V2.00.3 of the Errata will go into effect after the QIES March downtime of 3/19/2017. Two issues have been added to the errata: (1) both the hireDate and terminationDate items are now considered optional, and (2) edit -5001, which required that the same employeeID value could not be used more than once in a single PBJ submission XML file, is now deleted. The resolution of these issues will result in changes to the PBJ system, a new XSD file for validating submission XML files, and an update to the PBJ Data Submission Specifications Overview document. These changes will make it easier for providers and vendors to successfully submit this information without receiving errors. 

This change also implies that CMS will no longer be able to effectively calculate turnover. Nothing specific has been shared, but we would expect that over time they will reassess how to gather turnover information. 

It’s important to note that after the changes go into effect, submissions using the 2.00.0 spec will continue to work. The changes go into effect during their March maintenance downtime on 3/19/2017.  

OnShift is committed to making the Payroll-Based Journal submission process a success for our clients. We are currently assessing any changes necessary to support this update and as always will make any updates to our software to support submission success.