NPI Application and Integration

The National Provider Identifier (NPI) is a unique health ID number assigned to healthcare entities to simplify communication between providers and health plans and eliminate the risks of fraud and abuse. The 10-digit ID will replace all other IDs. With the May 23, 2007 deadline for implementation of the quickly approaching, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has implemented a number of initiatives to encourage healthcare organizations and professionals to obtain NPIs.

The NPI initiative will affect both business processes and the technical systems that support them. In moving from several IDs to one, organizations must review how they have traditionally assigned IDs, plus the intelligence they have been embedding into existing IDs. They must evaluate how these numbers are used in existing IT and business processes and how the new ID requirements will affect those systems and procedures.

Boston WorkStation and NPI Integration:
Boston WorkStation can play a critical role in helping organizations to conform to the new regulations and more easily update existing records throughout the facility. By automating the conversion process, organizations can manage costs, time, scope and the quality aspects of the NPI initiative while maintaining client satisfaction.

Boston WorkStation is workflow and process automation technology that allows organizations to dynamically respond to changing business and compliance requirements by automating common tasks, creating complex processes, automating interaction with Web sites, or integrating new applications, systems and devices.

Using Boston WorkStation’s highly sophisticated scripting technology, organizations can automate the conversion process and ensure that all provider IDs accurately migrate to new NPIs.

NPI Number Success with BWS
Saint Clare's Health System, a four-hospital system in Denville, NJ, needed to add NPI numbers for more than 11,000 physicians across the state into six different databases in its laboratory system.

"It would have taken someone 3,840 hours to enter this data manually across three databases, test and live, not even factoring in breaks or common errors which would need rework," said Rich Temple, CIO of Saint Clare's. "It took eight hours to write a Boston WorkStation script to automate these NPI updates; the script ran in the background for 300 hours with minimal human intervention. The savings in personnel time and assurance of error-free data entry -- priceless."