William,
My interest in machine readable IG formats is not so much as a provider...
I'm thinking about what my PMS vendor will need in order to build my
system. These "guides" represent instructions, constraints, etc. used
ultimately to control machines. The human-readable explanation of this
logic is appropriate for the federal register because the English language
is the present format/structure used for federal regulations. I'm
suggesting, however, that the *primary* version of the IG-instruction set
should be published in the form of hard-coded, machine-readable
statements... leaving nothing to the imagination. Then as a "companion
document" the SDO should publish the .pdf file that explains the meaning of
the machine-code. An after-market would probably produce a bunch of
similar documents/books ("The 837 for Dummies", "How to program the 837",
etc.), purported to be even more helpful than the "free" IG available from
the SDO.
What we have now is the opposite situation. The SDO publishes one
"official" guide document and our after-market responds with an assortment
of proprietary machine-readable versions, representing each translator
company's interpretation of the "official guide". Leaving this important
IG-interpretation work to be done completely outside the purview of the
SDO... in a variety of ways... and allowing the coding details to remain
proprietary... not only seems "wrong", but it looks like it would result in
a communication infrastructure that is expensive and unreliable. Most of
the need for the first 2 or 3 levels of testing is probably related to the
subtle differences in how translators have implemented the IG logic.
Regards,
Chris
At 10:07 PM 7/16/2002 -0400, William J. Kammerer wrote:
>Chris:
>
>Can we take this discussion to one or the other of the WEDI/SNIP mailing
>lists, in order to avoid cross-posting? I suggest "Transactions,"
>simply because discussion may uncover bigger issues than simply testing.
>
>Having said that, I'm sure the various purveyors of HIPAA validation
>tools and services must have the HIPAA IGs in some machine readable
>format, replete with business rules and access to standard code sets.
>Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to do HIPAA compliance testing (unless
>they had really lousy programmers who hard coded everything in their
>application code!!). So the stuff (machine readable IGs) obviously
>exists - though the vendors may treat these materials as valuable
>intellectual property, considering a lot of business knowledge is tied
>up in them. And once an IG has been codified in some interoperable
>standard, like SEF, it is not rocket science to produce an IMPDEF
>version (or vice versa).
>
>But I really want to know just what the heck anyone else (besides
>testing or translator vendors) would want with machine readable HIPAA
>IGs? Why would a payer or provider want to promulgate her own "subsets"
>of the HIPAA IGs? What kind of trading partner specific junk would you
>expect to see in one of these? Is trading-partner specific stuff even
>legal under HIPAA?
>
>William J. Kammerer
>Novannet, LLC.
>Columbus, US-OH 43221-3859
>+1 (614) 487-0320
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Christopher J. Feahr, OD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Tuesday, 16 July, 2002 09:16 PM
>Subject: RE: Testing for levels 3, 4, and 6
>
>
>Rachel,
>I have a few questions about this...
>
>- What sort of labor is required to convert the plain text version of an
>X12 IG into the IMPDEF format?
>- How is the logic represented... SQL statements?
>- Do commercial translators reliably read IMPDEF documents today?
>- Are there other approaches to "machine-readable IGs" in reasonably
>wide use besides IMPDEF?
>- Will the XML versions of the standards eventually render some of
>this moot?
>
>Since we would only be talking about a different presentation format, it
>would seem that X12 IGs could be translated to IMPDEF without any
>specific HHS authorization... right?
>
>(I'm sure there must be a slew of problems with doing this... or we
>would have done it. Where is the current discussion taking place within
>X12?)
>
>Thanks,
>Chris
>
>At 03:14 PM 7/16/2002 -0500, Rachel Foerster wrote:
> >BTW, a colleague of mine already has the HIPAA 270, 820, 834 and 835
>ICs and
> >a portion of the 837D in IMPDEF form.
>
>Christopher J. Feahr, OD
>http://visiondatastandard.org
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Cell/Pager: 707-529-2268
>
>
>
>
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Christopher J. Feahr, OD
http://visiondatastandard.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cell/Pager: 707-529-2268
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======================================================
The WEDI SNIP listserv to which you are subscribed is not moderated. The discussions
on this listserv therefore represent the views of the individual participants, and do
not necessarily represent the views of the WEDI Board of Directors nor WEDI SNIP. If
you wish to receive an official opinion, post your question to the WEDI SNIP Issues
Database at http://snip.wedi.org/tracking/.
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