[ale] Re: [ale-unemployed] Where we stand 2/8/02

[Benjamin Scherrey]

The doctor's problem is the new HIPAA requirements which standardizes (amongst other things) the format of how a health provider communicates with the payor (insurance or Medicare). 
This is a whole new thing and health providers have been spending massive dollars to get compliant. Any large organization actually has an official position for HIPAA Compliance Officer. 
Gotta love government involvement in health care....

Anyway, there's certainly no open source solution out there for this stuff yet and just the price of a printed spec for the transactions is enough to fill your proposed budget. Fortunately, 
we've got a lot of this done already and would be happy to take the opportunity to see how we could help your doctor.

	best regards,

		Ben Scherrey

2/9/2002 11:41:51 PM, "Dow Hurst" <dhurst at kennesaw.edu> wrote:

>I haven't been following this thread, but I do know that a doctor in Marietta has been faced with integrating billing into an electronic format.  This is to facilitate Medicare billing, I think.  
Anyway, the companies offering him this service charge anywhere from $4000-$9000 for upgrading his current hardware and software to do the job.  The current hardware is a 486 
running SCO Unix.  The current software is a ncurses type interface via ethernetted terminals throughout the office.  Old but reliable.  If his current hardware could run software that would 
do the job and you could offer say a $500-$2000 deal, I am sure he would jump at it.  I think Medicare won't deal with paper billing from doctor's offices anymore so this is a forced market.  
Just a thought,
>Dow




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