More on our "liaisoning" efforts with the OASIS ebXML Collaboration Protocol Profile and Agreement TC. The chair, Dale Moberg, has expressed interest in collaborating with us. To demonstrate just how important this stuff is, our man, Dick Brooks, will be meeting Dale sometime near the end of the month for some "face time" to discuss our mutual interests.
For any who have attempted to wade through the CPP/A Specification (are you listening, Chris Feahr?), it does seem daunting (at least to me). But more likely than not, Dick and Dale will probably figure out some way to use the CPP as a "template" just like what was done in the Open Travel Alliance, where we "hang" our stuff off of it. Even if we just use one or two parts from the CPP (such as the Delivery Channel stuff - which is an XML'ized means of expressing Peter Barry's "EDI addresses"), and design XML schemas for documents we refer to from the CPP, both of our groups will have a "victory" that can fuel many a press release. By the way, the monthly Archives for the OASIS ebxml-cppa mailing list are available at http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/ebxml-cppa/. William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. +1 (614) 487-0320 ----- Original Message ----- From: "William J. Kammerer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "OASIS ebxml-cppa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, 07 March, 2002 05:30 PM Subject: Re: [ebxml-cppa] WEDi/SNIP Electronic Trading Partner Agreements for HIPAA Dale: "Do you know whether HIPAA/WEDi/SNIP intends to adopt or create a way of specifying business processes?" We're not even able to establish formal business collaborations, as HIPAA EDI is very X12 message centric. It doesn't really lend itself to the one-for-one request-response paradigm - except maybe in the case of the eligibility request-response pair (X12 270/271) that might be conducted in "real-time." Healthcare administration (HIPAA) EDI has not really established any formalized approach to requirements analysis, use case development, etc., at all. It's just EDI messages back and forth. Unlike the supply chain side of the business, where at least you have a PO Ack to answer a PO, you can't really say an 837 "claim" (which is a misnomer: the 837 might contain many claims for many providers to a payer, depending on whether aggregation is done by a billing service) even has a single remittance response. See the dialog that goes back and forth about "business processes" in the thread entitled "Re: Requirements Gathering - Information Flows" at http://www.mail-archive.com/routing%40wedi.org/ - especially those written by myself or Dave Minch. At this time, I doubt we're going to make much use of the BP specifications - unless someone in BP can help us figure out some way to "choreograph" the mandated HIPAA X12 transactions! As far as the CPP-CPA is concerned, we're interested in a lot of stuff, like security profiles and policies, including support of both PGP and X.509, signing of the e-TPA, alternative messaging services and packaging for supporting "legacy" protocols (especially FTP, EDIINT AS1 and AS2, EDI value-added networks and Healthcare Clearinghouses), specifications for payload compression (some X12 837 claims documents can grow to megabytes), and selection of delivery channels depending on the type of transaction to be sent (e.g., batch vs. real-time). We also need mechanized versions of the stuff you'd expect to see in a paper TPA, like EDI contact information. Throw in references to EDI-centric information we use in HIPAA - like machine readable "companion documents" which augment situational element and segment notes in the HIPAA implementation guides, and notations which indicate which X12 documents are supported (a provider may say he uses 837s, but accepts only paper remittances - he can pick and choose). In addition, the PartyId OASIS URI will have to accommodate those ID domains used in Healthcare: e.g., DUNS, FEIN, HIN, NAIC Company Code, HCFA carrier ID, HCFA Fiscal Intermediary Identification Number, Medicare Provider Number, etc. Even though healthcare claims are processed by "value-added" intermediaries (such as re-pricers and reviewers), I have no idea whether multi-hop will be applicable to us (even though ebXML MS is a transport option, I doubt it will be used much in the next few years in Healthcare). Is this enough to get a discussion flowing for exploring our requirements? Sorry, but we can't change the X12 flavor of HIPAA - that's cast in concrete by legislation! William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. +1 (614) 487-0320 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dale Moberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "William J. Kammerer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "OASIS ebxml-cppa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, 06 March, 2002 06:20 PM Subject: RE: [ebxml-cppa] WEDi/SNIP Electronic Trading Partner Agreements for HIPAA Hi, We are still wrapping up details connected with 2.0, and we have active commitments to work on: 1. Oasis CPPA Negotiation protocol 2. BTP role capability and agreement representation. All other possible work items are still being prioritized, such as what are the requirements for agreements concerning Core Component "Contexts" We do have several futures projects that might be relevant to the e-TPA initiative you describe. 3. We want to attempt to provide support for specific business process or service flow representations beyond BPSS. 4. We want to be able to discuss security and transport bindings for other "protocol profiles" beyond ebXML Messaging. There is no data type restriction for payloads within ebXML, so I do not anticipate use of EDI style syntaxes for the payload data to be an issue. Do you know whether HIPAA/WEDi/SNIP intends to adopt or create a way of specifying business processes? Will there just be document names? We might still be able to work out conventions for that use case and subsume it under future project 3; we will need to decide how to refer to Service and Action names, and what to say about the ProcessSpecification, for example. It might be worthwhile to start a discussion mailing thread devoted to exploring your requirements. Do you think that would be useful? Bye Dale Moberg TC Chair