iQIES Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)

To begin onboarding, all users will need to create accounts in HCQIS Access Roles and Profile Management (HARP) system at: https://harp.cms.gov/ to gain access to the iQIES system. HARP is a secure identity management portal and asks for personal information to verify the user's identity. HARP uses Experian to remotely proof users by taking user-entered data, such as date of birth and social security number (SSN), to generate a list of personal questions for the user to answer to verify his/her identity.

After Two-Factor Authentication is complete, users can access iQIES using their HARP credentials at the following URL: https://iqies.cms.gov/ to complete their role request.

For a complete list of registration steps, please reference the iQIES Onboarding Guide: https://qtso.cms.gov/software/iqies/reference-manuals

iQIES will provide offline functionality within the survey application for surveyors in the field. However, this functionality will not be available for some time. In the beginning, users will need to continue using existing paper-based processes, if they lack Internet access.

Account creation will be quite different in iQIES. All prospective provider and state systems users will need to create an account through HCQIS Access Roles and Profiles (HARP) at https://harp.cms.gov/.  State Security Officials will be responsible for approving state user roles and managing local issues such as hardware. State Security Officials will not be responsible for approving providers’ accounts.

iQIES will have a help desk and a user manual and training webinar recordings will be also be available.

Yes, although ePOC will not be available until a later release. The iQIES development team does not have a confirmed date for this functionality at this time. However, we anticipate ePOC being available with the iQIES rollout for long-term care nursing homes, and once available, ePOC capabilities will be available for all provider types.

Yes. The citation management functionality in iQIES will allow multiple team members to add tags and create citation text for the same survey simultaneously. The Team leader Coordinator will be able to merge the individual write-ups into one.

We are still researching this. The first release of iQIES will allow users to organize and access letters, but will not allow letters or letter templates to be directly created in iQIES. We plan to expand capabilities in future iQIES releases, but the full extent of those capabilities has not yet been determined.

A user can request multiple roles within the same User Category (i.e., a state agency user could request the State Agency Security Official role and the State Agency General User role). A security official must approve all user roles.

iQIES will initially support state licensure of federally-certified providers. It will support state licensure-only providers at a future date.

States should have access to the same types of data they have access to today, including data migrated from the legacy (QIES and ASPEN) systems. The exception to this is that initially, iQIES will not have ownership or CMP information. That information will only be accessible in ASPEN.

All data entered by the states into iQIES will be available to view within the iQIES system in real-time. In addition, states will still be able to access the iQIES database using Structured Query Language (SQL) via an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) connection.

The current regulations will migrate into iQIES. iQIES will make any required updates to federal and state regulations and the plan is that states will eventually have the ability to make updates on their own.

According to the CMS retention policy, iQIES will store 10 years’ worth of data.

Users will be able to upload attachments to the provider, survey, intake, and enforcement modules.

There will be some restrictions on file types, but most commonly-used file types: .jpeg, .jpg, .png, .pdf, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .txt, .rtf, tif, will be accepted. Attachment size may be limited for the time being. iQIES will also scan the attachments for viruses before accepting the attachments into the iQIES system.

For Federally-certified entities that are licensed by the state, both federal and state information will be migrated to iQIES as the location and provider type are added to iQIES. At that time, ASPEN will no longer be available to enter new data. Information  will only be available as read only. Entities that are only licensed will remain available for access and modifying in ASPEN until the end of the process.

Reports for all providers in ASPEN will be available in ASPEN. At this point, there is no survey and certification report capability in iQIES except for the Provider History Report.

iQIES will retain legacy Survey Event IDs for migrated data. For all new surveys, the system will assign a unique alphanumeric ID that has a slightly different format. Survey IDs are going to infer the type of survey and visit number.

States will have security official(s) who will be able to approve the roles-based access for their state users. HARP requires two-factor authentication, which will bring additional security to the system.