William, Youbetcha! If/when the NPID becomes real, and when payers all agree to apply for and get one, and then when they all agree to put the identifiers on the cards, we'll all be very happy. Ditto the Nat'l provider IDs for inclusion in the ISAs (are providers even required to apply for them?). Until then, however, we'll unfortunately have to live with a hodge-podge of identifiers, but that shouldn't keep us from making any forward progress.
What if we simply said, for example: ok, all you payers that want to post your CPPs to begin development of CPAs with potential provider trading partners, post in the DNS the address where your CPP can be found under whatever identifier you are currently using on your insurance cards - preferably your group/plan ID, but if that's not present, and all you have is a phone number, post it under that. Without waiting for a national identifier, and waiting for the hundreds of millions of insurance cards to be re-issued, we can just start moving forward with establishing CPAs, and sending 837s. If I could just convince 25 large carriers to do that, I could achieve 50% of my goal for development of TPAs by 4/16/03, with only a fraction of the work. If the payers want to designate a CH to be their receiver, then they can simply point their identifier to where the CH's CPP resides (all the same to me). On the other hand, if they want to give me 1/2 of the $34.5 million, i would be happy to quit this job and host the database myself... Dave Minch T&CS Project Manager John Muir / Mt. Diablo Health System Walnut Creek, CA (925) 941-2240 -----Original Message----- From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 9:32 AM To: WEDi/SNIP ID & Routing Subject: Re: Are only 15 characters in the ISA receiver ID enough? Dave: I took a look at my insurance card for Anthem Community Choice, and besides my ID no. and group name, the BC/BS plan code of 332/834 (Inst. vs. Professional) appears on the front. There're also the usual phone numbers, and the claim submission mailing address. So how does a provider (today) know how to go from the respective Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan no. to an EDI Identifier? But I certainly hope *NOT* that "the best identifier of all for discovering the CPP is that contact address or phone number..." I want the payer or plan EDI identifier to appear directly on the insurance card - in order that things can be automated (without phone calls and paper). Speaking of Plans, Peter Barry presented a paper on Identifiers at the HIPAA Summit West in San Francisco last month. Maybe he can be persuaded to share the paper with the group. But anyway, the impression I came away with is that the National Plan ID will appear on the patient's Health Identification Card - and by using the National Plan ID as a key, you can access the National Plan ID database whence you're cross linked to the entities processing those plans (e.g., payers, employers, Third party administrators). If those cross links were to CPPs, then the National Plan ID database itself would supplant any need for a separate CPP Registry for payers. However, I wouldn't bet the farm on the possibility there would be any government sponsored databases available and running in time for H-day! - even though the HIPAA Funding proposal in the Bush Budget includes "$34.5 million to implement a system to assign unique identifiers for providers and health plans." William J. Kammerer Novannet, LLC. +1 (614) 487-0320
