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| March 13, 2010, 11:07 AM |
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C.O.M.B.A.T. Structure Steering Committee Advisory Board Subcommittees Secretariat In the News
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C.O.M.B.A.T.
Cooperative Open-source Medical Banking Architecture & Technology
Background:
Following our Tour, MBProject announced an initiative at the 2005 Medical Banking Institute to implement an open standards-based reference architecture. This platform, envisioned in 2001 when MBProject initially launched its portfolio of ideas for a new "medical banking" industry segment, culminates four years of policy research and plans for an industry architecture, and is based on broad industry input from banking and healthcare stakeholders.
2008 Update:
At our 2008 Institute, we officially adopted a new process for our workgroups. C.O.M.B.A.T. focused our workgroups towards critcal path development of cross-industry issues, in particular in the areas of regulatory compliance, real time adjudication and the delivery of Personal Healthcare Records via online banking platforms. One of these areas was funded by United Healthcare (real time adjudication starting with a new "Deductible Accumulator Engine").
C.O.M.B.A.T. helped to rally our members around a new accreditation program, called the MBProject Gold Seal Standard, that seeks to instill public trust in medical banking programs. The program is overseen by a new Accreditation Review Council. It assures end users that emerging medical banking constituencies have implemented the data privacy and protection protocols mandated under HIPAA and relevant banking laws.
C.O.M.B.A.T. also helped to define new policies for our year to year work efforts. Our new process requires the formation of a Focus Group that explores a vital industry issue. After a process of discovery a formal vote is taken by our membership to formalize a Workgroup. A workgroup must be fully funded and staffed, and is required to meet face-to-face at MBProject meetings (twice annually), as well as hold online meetings. The workgroup must develop a deliverable - a standard or best practice - that will go before the general membership for a vote. If affirmative, it is published in a new "Common Standards Guide" and is promoted at events, the literature and other venues.
Our C.O.M.B.A.T. Initiative was embraced by leading employers like The Walt Disney Company, Sanofi-aventis and large groups at the AIAG. We succesfully pulled together leading advisory groups with global experience and this helped us to form our next direction to enable better practices in healthcare. Today, many of the nation's leading banks offer new medical banking services. Yet we see many other areas that need to be explored, and these areas are being addressed thorugh our new workgroup process.
>> Click here for a list of our current workgroups.
We want to thank our members and the C.O.M.B.A.T. Advisory Board that helped us to evolve our core set of principles into a marketplace reality. -- MBProject Staff
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What were the original goals of COMBAT? Please read below.
C.O.M.B.A.T.
Mission:
To combat the rising costs of healthcare using medical
banking principles and technology. (Note: Today this mission has been taken up through our new working process.)
Objectives:
To implement a royalty-free, real-time administrative and clinical transactions testing architecture:
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The technology will illustrate real time administrative transaction processing in healthcare.
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The plan will fully embrace HIPAA and other policy requirements for the authorized exchange of medical records among banks, healthcare providers and consumers.
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The testing platform will be tested in 3 or more Proof-of-Concepts.
- After the testing phase, MBProject will host the platform for research and trading partner certification.
(Note: We are no longer designing a technology harness or platform but creating common medical banking standards and bestpractices that can be used by stakeholders to facilitate the industry. For example, we have created a new Gold Seal Program that provides a common set of protocols, based on banking and healthcare regulations like HIPAA, that assures users of medicalbanking services that the regulatory requirements are implemented by the applicant.)
Governance:
Steering Committee -- comprised of Chairperson and Workgroup Leaders
Healthcare Providers: American Hospital Association, Solutions (AHA)
Banks: The National Clearing House (NCHA)
Consumers: National Health Council (NHC); Consumers for Healthcare Choices (CHCChoices); Family Voices; National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) at The Urban Institute
Healthcare IT: Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS); Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE); Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC)
Employers: Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG)
Standards Development Org (SDO): National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP)
Government : Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI)
(Note: We are forming a new Public Trust Advisory Board that will award applicants with the new Gold Seal after they have met all the requirements. Our online program makes this new designation accessible to groups that are developing new medical banking services. We feel this is critical as new programs take hold in the marketplace.)
Press:
C.O.M.B.A.T. was formally launched at our 2005 Medical Banking Leadership Forum on July 8, 2005 (hosted by the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health). Press statements are as follows:
Milestones:
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