RE: State Code Required -- What do you do with foreign countries

[Tom Drinkard]

The DSMO has already approved two requests for this issue. DSMO CRID 557 sought to make the State or Province Code situational instead of required.� It was approved and applies to all of the "HIPAA" transactions.� The actual response is: " The adopted code list does not include Mexico. ASC X12N will change the usage to situational and state the situation, to correspond with the note in the standard."   DSMO CRID 739 sought to make the Postal Code element situational instead of required.� It was also approved and applies to all of the "HIPAA" transactions.� The actual response is: " Approve and recommend the usage change of the ZIP or Postal Code data elements from Required to Situational in all three future claim implementation guides. The situational note would be "Required for addresses within the United States and its territories when a ZIP Code is available from Code Source 51. For international addresses, the Postal Code is required when available."   If you find places where the N402 or N403 elements are still required, then please submit public comments to the conference for the affected transaction or transactions.   Tom Drinkard EDIT, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (678) 795-1251 (voice) (775) 458-6117 (fax)   -----Original Message----- From: Helene Guilfoy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 12:51 PM To: WEDI SNIP Transactions Workgroup List Subject: RE: State Code Required -- What do you do with foreign countries   Unfortunately, the comment does not overrule the 'Required' in the HIPAA IG. I've tried to get that ruling but ......� Seems like it doesn’t make any sense but I've been wrong before.�   BTW, the draft 4050 has the same data elements, same comment, same external reference.� In other words, they didn't correct the mistake.� Not sure whether to put a comment to X12 or a DSMO request.� Maybe I'll do both.   /Helene � Helene Guilfoy Guilfoy Consulting, LLC mobile: 717-468-8085 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]   -----Original Message----- From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 11:32 AM To: WEDI SNIP Transactions Workgroup List Subject: Re: State Code Required -- What do you do with foreign countries   Helene, looking at External Code Source for the State Code (N402) the same way as you do, I would agree with you. By the way, the USPS National Zip Code and Post Office Directory doesn't say much about Canadian provinces. The X12 external code list 22, just as an after-thought, adds a list of abbreviations for Canadian provinces - which is wrong.   The official Canada list is under "Province and Territory Symbols" at http://www.canadapost.ca/personal/offerings/addressing_guide/can/. Notice that the code for Newfoundland is now "NL" (I guess they wanted to give some attention to Labrador).�� Notice that Nunavut ("NU") has been carved out from the Northwest Territories - and the code for Qu�bec has changed from PQ to QC.   The X12 comment, "required only if the City Name (N401) is in the U.S. or Canada," certainly overrides anything HIPAA has to say in the matter, really. If you're building a foreign address, it should just be understood that N402 is not used - regardless of what the HIPAA EDI validators say. What else would make any sense?   William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. Columbus, US-OH 43221-3859 +1 (614) 487-0320   ----- Original Message ----- From: "Helene Guilfoy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'William J. Kammerer'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "'WEDI SNIP Transactions Workgroup List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, 31 March, 2003 09:51 AM Subject: RE: State Code Required -- What do you do with foreign countries       Thanks for making me laugh early on a Monday morning!   I think however, that the External Code Source for the State Code (N402) is 22 which is identified as the National Zip Code and Post Office Directory. This external code set also identifies the 'official' codes for the Canadian Provinces.   Therefore, only codes from the official guide and the list should be used in a HIPAA compliant transaction.   In fact the comment for N402 says that the data element is required only if the City Name (N401) is in the U.S. or Canada. There is the problem.....the IG says that the data element N402 is required but the comment contradicts that note. I understand that 4050 will make N402 Situational (as it should be based on the comment). Until then we're STUCK!   /Helene   Helene Guilfoy Guilfoy Consulting, LLC mobile: 717-468-8085 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]   -----Original Message----- From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 9:11 AM To: WEDI SNIP Transactions Workgroup List Subject: Re: State Code Required -- What do you do with foreign countries   "What do you do with foreign countries?" You ignore, insult or bomb them if you happen to be George "W" Bush. Hee, hee - a little anti-war humor there.   Tami Leaver originally asked "if the address is in Dresden Germany how would the state code be valued?" Chris Feahr said somewhere that I'm "quite knowledgeable about these sorts of things." I'm not always knowledgeable - but eternally curious. So to answer Tami's question, I pulled myself away from important executive work in Berlin and hopped on the next train to Dresden. After arriving and settling in, I immediately set to doing my research. I accosted various natives in the train station, the Altstadt and the Neustadt and inquired in my very best - yet woefully ungrammatical - schoolboy German: "Welche Staat ist Dresden in?" The answer was invariably "Sachsen." We call that "Saxony."   The state code for "Sachsen" can be found in the ISO 3166-2 Country Subdivision Codes, available on the UN/LOCODE page at http://www.unece.org/cefact/locode/service/main.htm. Thus, the state code for Saxony is "SN" - the second part of the 3166-2 code "DE-SN" for Sachsen. I never saw state codes used in addresses, though: the postal code provides enough detail to differentiate any possible like named burgs or cities. The only like-named cities an American must absolutely be able to distinguish are Frankfurt on the Main vs. Frankfurt on the Oder. The one on the Main River is the big one with the airport. All the research to answer Tami's question, beer gedrinken and train gehopping will explain my delay in giving the definitive answer to this pressing question of using foreign state codes in HIPAA transactions.   Keep in mind not all the ISO 3166-2 Country Subdivision Codes fit in the two alphanumeric bytes available in N402. Technically, the location identifier in N405 and N406 should be used for non US state or Canadian province codes, though these are marked unused in the HIPAA IGs. Since state codes are often not used for postal addresses (e.g., as in Germany), I would just stuff any old syntactically valid garbage in N402 to make the transaction "compliant." The city name and postal code are sufficient for all non-US and non-Canadian addresses.   William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. Columbus, US-OH 43221-3859 +1 (614) 487-0320       --- The WEDI SNIP listserv to which you are subscribed is not moderated. 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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/.�� These listservs should not be used for commercial marketing purposes or discussion of specific vendor products and services.� They also are not intended to be used as a forum for personal disagreements or unprofessional communication at any time.   You are currently subscribed to wedi-transactions as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this list, go to the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org or send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you need to unsubscribe but your current email address is not the same as the address subscribed to the list, please use the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org --- 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/. These listservs should not be used for commercial marketing purposes or discussion of specific vendor products and services. They also are not intended to be used as a forum for personal disagreements or unprofessional communication at any time. You are currently subscribed to wedi-transactions as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this list, go to the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org or send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you need to unsubscribe but your current email address is not the same as the address subscribed to the list, please use the Subscribe/Unsubscribe form at http://subscribe.wedi.org