EDI: A Guide to EDI and EC Applications in the Health Care Industryis an introduction to doing business electronically in healthcare.

Every healthcare manager can benefit from reading how to eliminate waste, errors and labor costs through the adoption of paperless standards-based transaction processing.. The goal of this book is to spread the word about the multiple benefits of adopting standards-based transaction processing. Of course some standards are now mandated by law. EDI standards are at the heart of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations for administrative simplification. Eight standard transactions mandated by HIPAA are described in this book along with their associated benefits for the healthcare providers. All of the payer-to-provider exchanges are described in both traditional and managed care settings. The book also addresses the key information exchanges between the human resource department and health plans, another area of HIPAA regulation.

All hospitals can benefit from EDI throughout the supply chain automating purchase orders, invoices and vendor payments to lower the all-in cost of supplies used in healthcare. The benefits for both the materials management and the accounts payable departments are described in detail.

Financial EDI is of particular importance in healthcare because of the benefits of automating payments. Vendor payments can provide additional vendor discounts and both premium and claim payments are mandated HIPAA standards. This book provides the basics needed to understand financial EDI and includes the NACHA EDI capable questionnaire for providers to determine if their banks are EDI-capable.

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