New York Customers
Administrative Services of Kansas, Inc
New York Vendor Call Minutes
June 2, 2005
Welcome: Today marks the second scheduled conference call for New York vendors. We will conduct the call the first Thursday of the month for at least the next three months. We will evaluate at that time how often a call should be held. We welcome input from participants on how often the call should be held. The call begins at 10:00 AM ET. Representatives from BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York and Blue Shield of Northeastern New York will be present on each call. All vendors are encouraged to sign up for the Vendor notification on the New York Customers section of the e-mail lists.
General Announcements:
- The monthly Vendor Call for New York Customers is scheduled to be held on the first Thursday of each month. Vendors wishing to receive an email notification reminding them of the next meeting will need to visit the ASK Website. Under New York Customers for the E-mail List Sign-up select Vendors. This option has recently been added under New York Customers, so please check to make sure you have selected this option. The direct link is http://www.ask-edi.com/listserver/all_hnny_signup.htm.
- Vendor Call Minutes will be published within 10 days on the ASK Website under New York Customers. Occasionally, questions asked in the Vendor Call will have to be researched. When possible answers will be published in the Vendor Call Minutes.
- Payer edits for NPI have not been implemented for New York Customers. All vendors are reminded that when an NPI is received, ASK will authenticate the number. More information on NPI edits will be provided in future conference calls.
- NPI enrollment is now available for all providers on the Internet at https://nppes.cms.hhs.gov/NPPES/Welcome.do.
- Asynchronous Communications will no longer be toll-free after April 2006. Vendors are encouraged to move all X, Y, or Zmodem users to other options. FTP, Internet, Ivans and VisionShare are all viable options. More information on Ivans and VisionShare can be found on the ASK Website under Connectivity Options. There is also helpful information under FAQ’s.
- Due to new security issues brought about by CMS, ASK is expecting password requirements to change sometime near October 1, 2005. New passwords will need to be at least 8 characters long and are require to contain at least one of each of the following:
- Upper Case Characters
- Lower Case Characters
- Numeric Characters
- Special Characters
- In and effort to eliminate unnecessary information in the EDI System, ASK will begin deleting inactive provider numbers. Provider numbers that do not show any activity for a 6 month period will be removed from the EDI System, effective immediately.
837 Issues:
- Beginning June 1, 2005, WebMD began accepting Payer ID 55204.
- Several trading partners received edit H241 in error on May 17 and May 18, due to and incomplete eligibility file. This error has been corrected and trading partners can now resubmit these claims.
835 Issues:
- Trading partners are not currently able to conduct multiple file downloads. Trading partners may want to look into using FTP and utilizing commands to retrieve all files at one time. If you wish to use FTP, please contact ASK to complete the FTP setup. Tammy Smith offered to help any vendor with questions regarding the use of FTP. Tammy’s email address is Tammy.Smith@ask-edi.com.
Other Issues:
- Due to the length of the Claim Confirmation Report, a request was made to receive the 277U report instead. This is an Unsolicited 277 report (a report generated without the 276 inquiry). ASK does not support this report, and we do not consider it to be the same as the Claims Confirmation Report. Suggestions for improvements to the Claims Confirmation Report have been submitted, but there is no time frame for when these might be implemented.
- To decrease the size of the Claims Confirmation Report, vendors are encouraged to decrease the number of batches per file. Some providers believe they need to separate BCBS files into separate accounts (batches) by group numbers. This is not required since claims are routed based on the Payer ID. If the number of batches is reduced, the number of pages in the Claims Confirmation Report is reduced.
- A problem was reported with on-line transfers via the ASK website. The trading partner tried using another computer and the problem was eliminated.
ASK wants to encourage you and your clients to share suggestions and ideas on how we can provide better assistance. Please send an email with suggestions to askedi@ask-edi.com.
The next regularly scheduled conference call is scheduled for 7/7/2005.
Phone Number: 1-877-326-2337
Conference ID: 7596037