Announcements

If a Plan Sponsor decides to submit interim payment requests, it must adhere to all terms and conditions specified in the Interim Payment Agreement. Please do not wait until Reconciliation to make sure your data is accurate. Submit “true, accurate, and complete” retiree lists and cost reports throughout the plan year, whenever your Plan Sponsor makes an interim payment request.

To avoid missed Reconciliation Deadlines and delayed subsidy payments, ensure that your RDS user accounts and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) are active and that you are able to access the RDS Secure Website today! Please encourage all users assigned to your RDS application(s) to log in to the Secure Website as soon as possible, and well in advance of your deadline date.

Review the summary of Reconciliation steps and the user roles responsible for completing each step. Know your responsibilities during Reconciliation, coordinate with other Plan Sponsor users and vendors (if applicable), and protect your Plan Sponsor’s subsidy!

The busiest RDS Reconciliation season is approaching – within 15 months after the application Plan Year End Date, Plan Sponsors must complete Reconciliation to finalize their application's Covered Retiree List and submit final cost data to CMS' RDS Center. This is a requirement for each application for which the Plan Sponsor is seeking subsidy. As such, now is the perfect time to familiarize yourself and your Plan Sponsor organization with the new, modernized Reconciliation process in the RDS Secure Website.

Starting today, January 16, 2023, Retiree Drug Subsidy (RDS) Plan Sponsors will now utilize the new CMS Office of Hearings Case and Document Management System (OH CDMS) for their Second Level Appeals. The OH CDMS is a web-based portal for RDS Plan Sponsors to submit and maintain their Second Level Informal Hearing Appeals and to correspond with the CMS Hearing Officer. This information is only relevant to Plan Sponsors who pursue an RDS Second Level Appeal. In support of this change, CMS’ RDS Center has published updated educational materials as well. Because the OH CDMS portal falls entirely outside of the RDS Program’s purview, CMS’ RDS Center will not provide technical support for this web application.

On January 16, 2023, the new CMS Office of Hearings Case and Document Management System (OH CDMS) will become available for RDS Plan Sponsors pursuing RDS Second Level Appeals. The OH CDMS is a web-based portal for RDS Plan Sponsors to submit and manage their Second Level Informal Hearing Appeals and to correspond with the CMS Hearing Officer. This information is only relevant to Plan Sponsors who pursue an RDS Second Level Appeal. This Second Level Appeal process change will not be relevant to First Level Reconsiderations or to Third Level Administrator Reviews.

CMS' RDS Center will be performing system maintenance on the RDS Secure Website on Saturday, November 19, 2022 beginning at 8:00PM ET and concluding Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 10:00AM ET. The Secure Website will be available but file processing will be impacted. 

The Annual Plan Year Application is the fundamental component of the Retiree Drug Subsidy (RDS) Program. In the modernized RDS Secure Website, Plan Sponsors can create new applications in two different ways. Regardless of how the Plan Sponsor chooses to create an application, certain required application information must be defined for an application to be considered complete and RDS eligible. Much of this required application information is defined during the Application Submission Process, before submission, whereas other required application information cannot be defined until an application is approved, after submission.

In the coming months, CMS will introduce RDS Plan Sponsors to the new CMS Office of Hearings Case and Document Management System (OH CDMS). The OH CDMS is a web-based portal for RDS Plan Sponsors to submit and manage their Second Level Informal Hearing Appeals and to correspond with the CMS Hearing Officer. The RDS Secure Website (SWS) and the OH CDMS portal are separate web applications requiring separate and unique registrations and account management. This change will only be relevant to Plan Sponsors who pursue an RDS Second Level Appeal.

CMS’ RDS Center would like to remind RDS Secure Website (SWS) users that for an Application to be considered timely, a Plan Sponsor must submit a Valid Initial Retiree List to CMS' RDS Center prior to the expiration of the Application Deadline, and that Retiree List must contain at least one Qualified Covered Retiree. Initial Retiree Lists are processed by CMS' RDS Center after the Application is submitted by the Authorized Representative. When the Valid Initial Retiree List is submitted and the format is validated, the Initial Retiree List Received Date displays on the Application Overview page. It can take several days after a successful file transfer for the application to show that the Valid Initial Retiree List is complete.