According to Health Data Management, The American Hospital Association (AHA) recently sent a letter to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) encouraging the government agency to collaborate with providers to establish the enumeration process, the process of creating a standard national provider identifier (NPI) under HIPAA. The hospital group recognizes that in order to have a successful NPI enumeration, millions of healthcare providers must apply for NPIs within a fairly narrow window of time. AHA fears the "initial burden" of implementing NPI falls on providers and the process risks being delayed or derailed entirely if the process does not meet providers' needs. Among AHA's recommendations to CMS were: enumerating in phases, based on geographic location or provider type; actively seeking provider input throughout the development of the enumeration system to ensure it will facilitate, not hinder, provider efforts to obtain an identifier; clearly delineating CMS and enumerator responsibilities; exploring enabling providers to authorize third parties such as state medical boards and professional societies to submit enumeration-related data on their behalf; developing materials that identify the required elements of a NPI application and the background documents necessary to complete the application.