New Paperless Electronic Communications System (by March 1, 2026)
Effective March 1, 2026, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will end all paper-based Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) communications and use an exclusively electronic system. Labs must ensure their state agency has a current email address on file to receive official notifications.
What’s changing: CMS will no longer mail paper fee coupons or CLIA certificates.
Action required: Labs should contact their CLIA State Agency or Accreditation Organization to confirm or update their email address before the deadline.
What you’ll receive electronically:
- CLIA fee coupons
- CLIA certificates
- Official communications and important updates from CMS
A New Era of CLIA Oversight
The CLIA have long set the baseline for quality in U.S. clinical labs. In 2025, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) rolled out the first major set of CLIA updates in decades, marking a shift in laboratory compliance requirements. These changes affect how labs handle staffing, proficiency testing, and even how they receive communications from regulators.
While none of the new requirements are aimed directly at vendors, they raise the bar for labs themselves, and indirectly increase the importance of tools that support compliance, efficiency, and audit readiness.
For additional information, please see the CMS’s CLIA Partner Toolkit Fact Sheet or the October 2025 update from the College of American Pathologists
