Ronald Bowron wrote: Having worked in several clearinghouse environments, I can tell you that the Sender/Receiver ID in the ISA was not used much and usually not relied upon for Batch processing, which is how clearinghouses typically do business. Because users generally logged into BBS's or FTP'd data, we already knew who they were and managed the identity of the sender and assumed we were the receiver. - Why else would they be sending it - ;)
As when using my ISP, it doesn't matter what ID I use for sending e-mail: whether my personal account or my Novannet account, it all goes through the same outbound SMTP server. I could even send an e-mail to appear to be from Kepa or Rachel to fool you all. My ISP couldn't care less, as is appropriate. They know who I am when I log on and that I've paid my bill, and that is sufficient for their purposes. The e-mail ID on the From: line in this e-mail only determines to where my correspondents will send responses. This is analogous to a real letter. I doubt the phone company would care if Ronald Bowron remitted his phone bill with my return address in the upper left hand corner of the envelope; that would not determine which account was posted with his payment - the bill stub accompanying the check would. As a matter of fact, the envelope would probably have been opened, discarded and shredded long before the payment was ever processed. The return address on the envelope would only be used by the Post Office in case there were a problem in delivery, or to advise the sender the contents were shredded in the sorting machine - similar to the TA1 and 997 acknowledgements' use of the ISA sender ID. In addition, signatures may be based on the sender ID (i.e., the sender ID is used to look up the certificate). But once an Interchange has been received and authenticated by the receiver - and the 837 or whatever extracted - nothing from the ISA determines who the submitting provider is (that's in the body of the 837 itself). Likewise, in a direct point-to-point connection with no intermediaries, I suppose Ronald would know he was the receiver and would not have any real need to make decisions based on the ISA receiver field, except insofar that it should be turned around as the sender in the ISA of the TA1 and 997 acknowledgements (so the other party knows how to reconcile the acknowledgement). William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. +1 (614) 487-0320
