I have been thinking of BizTalk healthcare classes or writing a book for BizTalk in relation to healthcare, and I thought that I would put the things that I would look for if I was going to pay for a class or heaven forbid; buy a morbid book.

1. The teacher/writer has to have healthcare experience.

2. I want to have a brief understanding of the ’flow’ of document in a healthcare situation:

837 (Claims) are submitted to a health plan for payment
997 (Acknowledgments) are returned to know if they pass Type 1 and Type 2 validation
824 (Application Notification) can be returned for Type 3 through Type 7 validation, depending on the capability of the backend system
835 (Claim Status) are sent back to notify of Claim status
270 (Eligibility Request) are sent to health plan to ask for status of patient eligibility for service
271 (Eligibility Response) are sent from health plan in response to patient eligibility request
276 (Claim Status Request) are sent to health plan to as for status of claim
277 (Claim Status Response) are sent from health plan to in response of claim request
820 (Payment Notification) are sent from the health plan to notify of payment of the claims

3. I want to map a 837, as that will be the transaction I will most deal with, spend a majority of the the time mapping the 837 transaction if I have to, because that is my biggest pain point.

4. Explain HL7, where it is used

Provider transactions, largely used in intra department messaging

5. Create a sample ORU^R01 message from a flat file and create a flat file from a ORU^R01 message so I can learn the following HL7 nuances:

Schema Generation (partner specific schema creation)
Multipart Messages
MSH Segment
BodySegments
ZSegments
How to map the flat XML message that the BTAHL7 pipeline (DASM) creates / (ASM) expects
Explain MLLP, integrate it into one of the ORU labs

Things I want to briefly want to learn:

Pipelines
Orchestrations
Adapters
(I need to know what they are, but it should not be the focus of a the class/book)

Things I don’t want to learn:

BAM: BizTalk in a Healthcare Scenario should never be the system of record, the Claim Payment application should be, the out-of-the-box EDI reporting functionality that comes with BizTalk accounts for 99% of what I need
BRE: BizTalk would not be used for message modification/routing/anything else the BRE can be used for, as there are entire workflows designed in every claim payment processing system that deals with changing business rules
AS2: It is too big of a beast to teach along with all of the things that I listed above, and second: NO HEALTHCARE COMPANY TRANSMITS DATA USING AS2
Purchase Orders, Invoices, Advanced Shipment Notifications: I can look at a whole plethora of examples that Microsoft publish. Maybe a MCO deals with ordering supplies for an office, but by in large, I want to know about HIPAA transactions; not transactions I would never see at work.

Anything that I missed? I am thinking of putting together an online class (or via CD) or a book, what would you like to see? Is there any interest in a BizTalk/Healthcare book?

Tell me your experiences!