Commerce Desk will help
CHITA and the Oregon HIPAA Forum enable
healthcare organizations in their
communities to achieve HIPAA compliance
more efficiently and cost-effectively
Bellevue, WA – April
30, 2003 – The Seattle-based
Community Health Information Technology
Alliance (CHITA) and The Oregon HIPAA
Forum will utilize Edifecs
CommerceDesk solution to facilitate
efficient and cost-effective HIPAA
compliance within their respective
healthcare communities.
CommerceDesk combines transaction
testing and certification capabilities
with a host of information sharing
tools to enable multiple entities
that share the same goal to collaborate
more efficiently, utilize information
more effectively and reduce HIPAA
compliance costs for the entire community.
These groups exist to enable
people to work together to achieve
compliance, preventing duplicate efforts
and saving their healthcare communities'
a bundle of money in the process,
said Sunny Singh, CEO of Edifecs.
Not only that, but they are
widely viewed as the HIPAA experts,
so we're enthusiastic that they
recognized the unique value of CommerceDesk
as a community enablement tool for
facilitating HIPAA compliance.
One immediate impact the CommerceDesk
solution will have on the cost of
compliance is in the area of transaction
testing and certification. CHITA and
the Oregon HIPAA Forum will offer
testing free to members of their healthcare
community.
Our job as a non-profit is
to advance the adoption of information
technology in healthcare for the purpose
of improving efficiency and quality
of care, said Todd Langton,
CHITA program director. We
are very excited about the opportunity
to work with Edifecs and their CommerceDesk
solution because it gives us an opportunity
to both meet our mission and reduce
the cost of HIPAA compliance for healthcare
organizations in our state.
By providing free transaction testing
and certification to the entire healthcare
community in their states, these collaborative
groups make it possible for the state's
healthcare community to adopt a de-facto
standard. Payers, providers, billing
services, clearinghouses and other
vendors can all access the same transaction
testing and certification source for
free. Such a standard can speed the
process when trading partners begin
testing with each other directly,
saving potentially millions of dollars
in compliance costs across the healthcare
community.
The members of the Oregon
HIPAA Forum understand first hand
the value of testing with a third
party but we've also experienced
first hand the cost of varying interpretations
found in other testing solutions,
said Dean Hill of PayerConnection
and co-chair of the Forum's
transactions sub-work group. By
using a single no cost testing solution
and thereby adopting it
-- more --
CHITA and Oregon HIPAA Forum adopt
CommerceDesk
Page 2
as our community standard; we support
our goal of making HIPAA compliance
easier and more affordable for everyone.
CommerceDesk is all about
helping healthcare entities help themselves
and the flexibility of the solution
lets us provide support in a way that
works best for our state's healthcare
community, Hill said.
Information sharing capabilities
such as resource pages, survey tools
and more give participants critical
data in their quest for compliance.
About Edifecs
Edifecs (www.edifecs.com) is a proven
provider of solutions for rapidly
deploying and managing today's
trading partner networks. The Edifecs
enablement solution suite encompasses
the CommerceDesk™, SpecBuilder™
and XEngine™ product families
-- all designed to reduce cost and
time-to-market for companies deploying
trading partner networks. The Edifecs
HIPAA solution provides enablement
technologies to accelerate the implementation
of HIPAA and healthcare trading communities.
HIPAADesk (www.HIPAADesk.com), powered
by Edifecs CommerceDesk, is
the first free and full service HIPAA
compliance checking & testing
facility for the healthcare industry.
Founded in 1996, Edifecs serves an
installed base of more than 1,200
customers and partners including numerous
B2B providers such as GE Global eXchange
Services, Microsoft, Harbinger/Inovis,
Quovadx, Sterling Commerce and TIBCO.
Edifecs healthcare clients include
Abbot Labs, Baxter Healthcare, BCBS
Association, BCBS of Alabama, BCBS
of Oregon, Regence and many others.
Edifecs is a technology partner for
more than 30 industry consortia including
RosettaNet, ebXML, UN/CEFACT, CompTIA,
and OBI. Based in Bellevue Washington,
Edifecs is privately held. For more information regarding Edifecs solutions click here.
About CHITA
CHITA (www.chita.org) is a member-driven,
non-profit alliance of healthcare
and technology organizations, both
public and private. It is operated
under the non-profit Foundation for
Health Care Quality. CHITA's
mission is to advance the adoption
of information technology in healthcare
for the purpose of improving efficiency
and quality of care. CHITA promotes
and enhances electronic commerce and
health information access in a number
of ways, including consensus building
through public education and outreach,
standards development and the creation
or support of significant demonstration
projects. Chita's research efforts
and projects are focused on addressing
the shared health information needs
of insurance and managed care companies,
physicians, hospitals, medical clinics,
government, health information technology
vendors and consumers by bringing
them together and collaborating on
common issues.
About Oregon HIPAA Forum
The Oregon HIPAA Forum is an on-going
gathering of a wide variety of public
and private organizations within the
Oregon health care community. The
organizations meet periodically to
address practical, legal and public
policy issues presented by HIPAA.
The forum has brought about the necessary
dialogue among industry implementers
of the HIPAA standards, identified
industry Best Practices
for implementation of those standards,
and has developed a process that includes
an outreach to current industry initiatives.
Their efforts and projects are focused
on assisting covered entities, business
associates, and other interested parties
in implementing the practices required
by the Administrative Simplification
provisions of HIPAA and to foster
public education about the impact
of HIPAA.
Media Contact:
Marcallee Jackson
marcalleej@edifecs.com
(714) 865-5059
