--- You wrote:

HIPAA seemes to me to be overly ambitious in this assumption that a standard
document is a magical solution to disparate business systems and processes.
I have not seen business revamping their entire processing systems to
conform to HIPAA requirements, but rather external patches (tape, paperclips
and chewing gum).  

It seems that without the "mass upgrade to every provider's desktop
software" which would equate to a standard business process across the
board, how will HIPAA ever work?  And the same should extend to the backend
systems of the major payors.  Without these commitments, this is going to be
a long rough ride.
--- end of quote ---

I agree with you underlying premise, that unless everyone eventually revamp their 
backend systems this is little more than another layer of patches and conversions on 
top of everything else. But, if this becomes the standard, then everyone will 
eventually go to a backend system that works directly with the format, that seems 
clear to me. In 3 years, if you were a payer who needed to upgrade your processing 
system, wouldn't you lean towards a system that read 837's and produced 835's?

-Chris Healy
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
PFS-Payments Mgr
603-650-3730


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