I hate to be pedantic (but when I do it, I'm being "precise"), but if you paid for a DUNS, you would pay Dun & Bradstreet, not "DUNS."
Aside from that, obtaining a DUNS for your own organization is free: I didn't pay anything to get assigned a DUNS from D & B, and as I explained to Chris Feahr this morning, he can get his DUNS for free by following the procedure I outlined. I think you have to pay $.75 or some other nominal charge to get the DUNS numbers of other organizations (though I, too, have gotten those free when I said the numbers were for "research" - I never pay retail). In any event, you would rarely have to ask Dun & Bradstreet for the DUNS of your trading partner; more often is the case your trading partner would give you his DUNS, telling you that's how he is addressed in the ISA. Everyone knows his own DUNS or Federal Tax ID (by the way, the Federal Tax ID is the same thing as the Federal Employer Identification Number - EIN or FEIN) - which is "shorthand" for saying someone at his own organization (say, the CFO) certainly knows these IDs. Once you have a DUNS, enumerating the DUNS+4 is free, because you do it yourself as described in my e-mail from last night. As a matter of fact, this is a good time for me to do the same. Novannet's DUNS is 07-293-0527. So I'm going to assign some DUNS+4 numbers simply by making up internal 4-digit numbers and appending them to my DUNS: 0729305270001 - Accounts Receivable 0729305270002 - Accounts Payable 0729305270003 - Programming department 0729305270004 - Columbus warehouse (my garage and mud-room) 0729305270005 - New Jersey Sales office, and 0729305270006 - Novannet mascot: my cat, Snobol. Being a small outfit, I probably won't require the fine-grained detail of a DUNS+4 when asking others to address my EDI portal: you'll just need to put 072930527 in the receiver field (specifying the code for "DUNS" in the Interchange ID Qualifier) and EDI data will get to me. This assumes we have our recommendations in place for the CPP and Registry, and that I've chosen to be identified by my DUNS. By the way, how many other cats have their own DUNS+4 ID? William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. +1 (614) 487-0320 ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Frenkel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'WEDi/SNIP ID & Routing'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, 28 March, 2002 12:44 PM Subject: RE: Payers sure do like proprietary provider IDs! Do providers feel the same way? Chris, You do pay DUNS for every DUNS number but I think the DUNS+4 is free or at least less expensive. I was just making a point that there is more to DUNS number. It would be more appropriate for the government to have a registry but the last time I worked for a government contractor the GSA required you to have a DUNS number. Regards, David Frenkel Business Development GEFEG USA Global Leader in Ecommerce Tools www.gefeg.com 425-260-5030 -----Original Message----- From: Christopher J. Feahr, OD [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2002 9:02 AM To: David Frenkel; 'WEDi/SNIP ID & Routing' Subject: RE: Payers sure do like proprietary provider IDs! Do providers feel the same way? Dave, I think I did see a little discussion of the "DINS+4", but it strikes me as a partially "de-standardized" standard intended to accomplish what you could also do by requesting a unique DUNS for every department, plan, or incoming message portal in your company. D&B might not condone this, however... preferring to have only one unique DUNS for each identifiable business enterprise. But it doesn't sound like they really support or even acknowledge the "DUNS+" hack either. The govt. could render this moot by getting off its butt and creating a national registry of (tax-paying) business organisms with some sort of unique identifier. Without the full cooperation of a company like D&B and an agreement to support the ID-system the way people want to use it, it strikes me as risky to recommend it as a primary communication identifier for healthcare EDI. If we were going to lean on someone to help support a national business ID registry, it may as well be the fed. govt. -Chris
