Health
Care EDI Solutions
Health Care EDI
When discussing health care EDI, it is important
to know the application that the EDI technology
will have in the health care institution. There
are two major areas for health care EDI:
- EDI in the health care supply chain
- EDI for claims management and sending patient
information
Top
Reasons For Emanio's Health
Care EDI |
- HIPAA compliance for
EDI
- exchange pruchase orders
and invoices
- easy to use, ideal for
small organizations
- automate
the EDI process for true "zero-effort"
- full reporting and audit
capabilities
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EDI in the health care supply chain: Health
care EDI as used in the supply chain
is generally based on hospitals and other
facilities (providers) ordering their supplies
from their vendors. For this type of health
care EDI relationship, the provider sends
an outbound EDI purchase order message to
the health care supplier. Often the supplier
will have used health care EDI to send a
product catalog to the provider from which
they can order the needed products. From
the perspective of the supply chain, health
care EDI is far behind other industries.
Health care EDI can in no way be compared
with the level of sophistication prevalent
in the retail and manufacturing industries.
There are a few organizations working on making
health care EDI focused on the supply chain
more sophisticated. One of the organizations
working with developing the health care EDI
industry is the Health Care eBusiness Collaborative
(www.hcec.org)
that has been a pioneer within the area for
many years. This organization works closely
with the Health Care EDI Coalition (HEDIC).
There are far fewer organizations working on
the supply chain side of health care EDI than
on the HIPAA/claims management side.
Health care EDI most commonly refers to the
claims management and patient record side of
the business, which is guided by the HIPAA
standards for security and information transfer.
Generally there are completely different departments
within a provider that deals with health
care EDI from the claims management perspective,
and sometimes there is a “turf war” between
these departments. At times, health care EDI
is not centralized on one platform and providers
utilize two or more systems to send health
care EDI, one for claims management and the
other for supply chain data. This is most often
completely unnecessary, as the sending and
receiving of health care EDI messages is the
same process, regardless of what the use is.
Therefore, there is little efficiency regarding
the EDI infrastructure in health care
EDI.
One way to rationalize health care EDI is
for providers to understand that the same infrastructure
can be utilized for both claims management
and HIPAA transactions.
Finding a solution for Health Care EDI software
is not as easy as finding an EDI software
solution for retail applications. The
reason has to do with the available technical
infrastructure of the hospitals that use Health
Care EDI. As hospitals and healthcare
organizations begin to adopt Health Care EDI,
the need for an easy to deploy, easy to use
Health Care EDI solution becomes evident. Unlike
EDI in the retail world, Health Care EDI is
driven and mandated by large healthcare suppliers
such as Cardinal Health. Health Care EDI, for
this reason, has experienced its share of challenges
in adoption and implementation. While
large providers and suppliers such as Cardinal
have the necessary resources to deploy Health
Care EDI, many of the smaller healthcare organizations
that are required to adopt Health Care EDI
software are technically challenged and financially
strapped. What is the optimal Health
Care EDI solution for these small healthcare
organizations with limited budgets for Health
Care EDI and limited IT infrastucture?
One answer for these organizations is to find
a Health Care EDI solution that is easy to
use, easy to deploy and that can be automated
as much as possible. This type of Health
Care EDI software allows the healthcare organization
to focus on health care rather than focusing
on Health Care EDI. EMANIO’s Health
Care EDI software can be installed in as little
as 10 minutes. EMANIO’s Health
Care EDI software is available with pre-configured “Health
Care EDI kits” that make the process
of adding support for new Health Care EDI trading
partners quick and easy. Health Care EDI with
EMANIO becomes a process of managing your hospital
instead of managing your Health Care EDI software.
Automation is another key aspect of EMANIO’s
Health Care EDI solution. Emanio’s software
provides for the automation of as many steps
as possible in the Health Care EDI chain, ensuring
that the hospital can focus on its business rather
than on Health Care EDI. Regardless of
which Health Care EDI solution your hospital
selects, it is critical that you ensure that
the Health Care EDI software provides an easy
means of adding support for new trading partners.
It is also important that the Health Care EDI
software be easy to use and easy to automate. With
these requirements for a Health Care EDI solution,
any health care organization should be able to
comply with Health Care EDI mandates. |
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