| Benefitfocus Takes HIPAA 834 Live with BlueCross and Companion |
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Mount Pleasant, South Carolina - October 3, 2002 – Benefitfocus.com, Inc. today announced the release of their new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant data exchange capabilities that allow for the secure electronic communication of health care data as required under Title II.
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BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina and Companion HealthCare are the first carriers receiving the new HIPAA 834 format. Full compliance testing has been completed and the new format is now in production.
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HIPAA legislation under Title II requires the health care industry to standardize patient information and insurance enrollment information. The desired outcome of this standardization is for health care information to be managed securely and transmitted electronically with the sender and receiver speaking the same language.
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In 1996 congress passed HIPAA legislation in an effort to protect the security and confidentiality of health information transmitted electronically as well as to allow individuals to qualify for insurance coverage when changing jobs.
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The expected result is improved efficiencies, reduced paperwork, easier detection of insurance abuse and the ability of all workers to change employers, even if they (or family members) had pre-existing medical conditions. Some estimates predict the cost of updating computer systems to fully support the HIPAA data format to be three times the cost of updating for Y2K date issues.
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Current regulations require health care providers and sponsors of insurance coverage to be compliant by October 2003. Until recently, there has been little or no standardization of the medical codes used by the various segments of the health care market throughout the United States. This standardization process is a tremendous undertaking. Benefitfocus recognized the need for insurance carriers to make headway towards HIPAA compliancy.
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The Benefitfocus development team has created software that now enables carriers to electronically exchange employee enrollment information in the standard format as required by HIPAA, allowing these carriers to be on the leading edge of adopting the Title II standards. According to Doug Moreland, Chief Technology Officer for Benefitfocus.com, "Working with Blue Cross companies to provide 834 transaction support not only ensures their compliance with HIPAA, but it will also greatly reduce their costs over time as the volume of transactions increases, efficiencies are realized, and as more trading partners adopt HIPAA 834."
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Continues Moreland, "We are excited and proud to be transmitting data in the 834 format a full year ahead of the scheduled compliance date. We are getting a lot of calls from other carriers who are scrambling to get this technology in place. We have established a set of HIPAA test case scenarios and have created a HIPAA team to help carriers test and deploy their 834 capabilities."
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About Benefitfocus
Benefitfocus.com, Inc. (Benefitfocus) is a leading provider of benefits administration software and services, offering employees and employers access to all benefits and human resource information securely over the Internet. Linking this data to payroll vendors and benefit providers, Benefitfocus applications seamlessly exchange data, therefore reducing errors and costs associated with traditional paper-based forms. Benefitfocus applications are designed to make companies more efficient, cost-effective, and more focused on delivering actual benefits instead of spending time on undue paperwork.
The company is headquartered in Mount Pleasant, SC (Charleston), and has an established client base of over 8,000 corporate employers in all fifty states.
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