Industry Groups and Caucuses

The mission of the Clearinghouse Caucus is to bring consistency, reliability, dependability and process visibility to the commercial networking markets involved with the exchange of business-related documents, between and among the networking community, through the development and widespread adoption of standards and implementation guidelines.

Key Goals and Objectives

1. Identify and organize current issues that address reliability, dependability, and process visibility by promoting best practices;

2. Identify areas where new standards and/or guidelines can be introduced;

3. Work with the appropriate standard-setting organization to develop and promote interconnectivity (peer-to-peer connection) standards and guidelines;

4. Work through the various industry channels to promote the adoption of new standards and guidelines, that will result in a consistent and auditable process with end-to-end visibility for all customers;

5. Provide a customer community voice to the networking community, to freely exchange ideas that will improve and facilitate networking.

The Dental Caucus is an informal industry group with a focus on the dental and dental benefits industry interests in X12 activities concerning health care transaction standards.

Key Goals

1. To advocate on EDI-related issues on behalf of the dental and dental benefits industry

2. To facilitate dental and dental benefits industry input into the X12 standards development and maintenance processes

3. To encourage dental and dental benefits industry participation in X12 subcommittee workgroups so that the dental voice is heard and information from the workgroups is shared with the dental and dental benefits industry

4. To educate the dental and dental benefits industry X12 participants about EDI-related issues.

The Dental Caucus chair is Brian Flynn, National Association of Dental Plans (bflynn@nadp.org) and the vice-chair is Kathy Jonzzon, DDPA (kjonzzon@deltadental.com).

The Dental Caucus meets just prior to regularly scheduled X12 Committee Trimester meetings. Meetings are typically scheduled on Sunday, 5:00 - 7:00 pm.

Any registered attendee of the X12 Standing Meeting may participate in the Dental Caucus meetings.

The Provider Caucus is an informal industry group with an interest in X12 activities concerning health care and related transaction standards.

Key Goals

1. To advocate on EDI-related issues on behalf of health care providers

2. To facilitate provider input into X12 standards development and maintenance processes

3. To encourage provider participation in subcommittee workgroups, so that provider input is heard and information from the workgroup is shared with other providers

4. To alert providers to issues being discussed that need provider input

5. To educate providers attending X12 Standing Meetings about EDI-related issues

The Provider Caucus chair is Nancy Spector, American Medical Association (Nancy.spector@ama-assn.org).

The Provider Caucus meets during regularly scheduled X12 Standing Meetings. Sessions are typically scheduled for:

• Sunday, 4:30 p.m. (or after CMS Caucus ends, if later) - 6:00 p.m.

• Tuesday, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Any registered attendee of the X12 Standing Meeting may participate in Provider Caucus sessions, including those attending for one day only.

The Innovation Taskforce was formed as an informal industry group for collaboration during X12 Standing Meetings with the intent of:

1. Furthering transparency and communication related to the exchange of data between health care entities

2. Automation to improve transparency and efficiency in the health care industry

The initial focus of this group was related to the prior authorization transactions and business processes.

The group typically meets early in the week during scheduled X12 Standing Meetings and participation is open to registered Standing Meeting participants.