Customers Profile
APS Healthcare Inc, (http://www.apscare.com)

Our Solution
After interacting with the APS and understanding the requirements it was decided to form two core teams one at onsite and the other offshore, which will work together in developing the system.

The purpose of this project was to develop a solution meeting one of APS's client's requirements while taking into account the needs of other APS clients as well. APS wanted us to develop the x278 component that would be used to interchange "Services Review" information with the client.

The required components were developed using Visual Basic. For some of the preprocessing steps that involved modifications to the data in the Oracle database, stored procedures where written.

Methodology
The Incremental model is used to develop the project.

Benefits
The x278 Component helps APS in generating standards based EDI data for interchanging with its clients with ease and accuracy. 

Introduction
The HIPAA Formatter Library was developed for APS Healthcare Inc to power the existing CCMS application in order for it to be HIPAA Compliant. The x278 HIPAA Library that has been developed caters to the Health Care Services Review - Request for Review and Response (x278) requirements standard.

Situation
For the healthcare industry to achieve the potential administrative cost savings with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), standards have been developed and need to be implemented consistently by all organizations. The idea behind this project is to facilitate a smooth transition into the EDI environment through a uniform implementation. 

The client's primary goal was to develop an extension to the CCMS application that would add this transition capability and bring in HIPAA compliance to the system.

Features

• Generates EDI data in X12 format that follows the x278 specifications. Requirements Specification (SRS)
• Reusable component. Any customer for their x278 requirement can use the base library that is not bound to any specific business process of a single customer.

Tools and Technologies

• Microsoft Windows NT4.0/ 2000 Server
• Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0
• Oracle 8.0 Database Server

Our Process

In a typical x278 implementation, the system has to generate EDI data to be sent to the client as and when a request is coming. In a "Request for Review and Response" the request is for getting the list of services that are offered for a patient/member. For such a request, the system should respond with the list of services offered for that patient/member. 

The system that has been implemented generates the EDI Interchange data to be sent to the client as when the database is updated with new services offered to its members. All updates to the database are identified using a group id. It is for this group that the EDI data has to be generated and sent to the client. A user enters this group id into the application that has been developed whenever he wants the data to be sent to a client. The system would do some pre-processing on the data from the database and then generate the EDI data and store it as files. 

Conclusion

We have made significant contributions in terms of the design for this system and tried to keep in mind the client's long-term requirements. The System was designed and developed to help the client fulfill its needs. Our work to complete the project on time was appreciated.