Our local Blue Shield decided not to pay Office Ally for claim submissions. This puts our office in a bit of a situation because, coupled with Medicare claims, we will have to pay for what was previously a free service. Yes, $19.95 won’t put us in the poorhouse; but I, like the Milennials, prefer free. I thought I would do some brain picking before I send in the voluminous enrollment forms.
This leaves us with 3 choices; paper, Zmodem or SFTP. Our local Blue Shield does not have a website like Aetna’s where we can securely upload the files.
In the old days we had an external modem that the vendor installed with a program that automatically dialed up the Blue Shield clearinghouse & transfer the 837P. We can’t use that Unix computer because it had a minor explosion. The first question: can we just set up a connection as if we would for a dialup Internet Service Provider on our Windows 7 laptop to the Blue Shield clearinghouse? If not, why not?
We don’t want to bother with installing another external modem & prefer to use the existing internal modem. I think it’s far more difficult to hack a phone line than an Internet connection.
If it’s not practical to use Zmodem transfer, how secure would it be to use FireFTP which has a SFTP option? It seems a lot simpler to use this add-on instead of a full blown client like WinSCP.
I think it’s far more difficult to hack a phone line than an Internet connection.
Government security agencies would disagree. They are arguing against strong encryption protocols which are possible over the internet that prevent them from eavesdropping as easily. Where such agencies are more than happy to allow you to use land lines which they can tap. ZMODEM and other such transfer protocols were designed for maximum speed in transfer without any security in mind.
I do not fear the NSA listening in even without a FISA warrant. I may not like it but I don’t think that my patients will be harmed.
To-date I have seen no reports of federal agencies illegally taking PMI for the purpose of identity theft nor have I seen reports of cyber criminals hacking landlines.
With Zmodem transmission & offline use of the old PMS, we had no security breach for nearly 20 years.
From the criminals’ point of view, it is far more efficient to hack a website like Anthem.
There is no truly safe mode of transmission.
If our office hand delivered the CMS 1500 forms to our local Blue Shield, we can be mugged en route. This would be a very non-productive method to steal patient information.
Today USB sticks are so small, you could swallow them if you see a hacker approaching you…
Information on the stick should also be encrypted. When leaving for delivery, always use a different road, clothes, wigs and glasses. Use Google glass to identify the hacker! ;-))
It shouldn’t be too difficult to segregate the bcbs claims by setting up another x12 partner for the blue shields and sending through sftp. I prefer Filezilla.
Setting up the X12 Partner dialog is technically straightforward. I will enlist the help of Blue Shield EDI to be certain I have the ID’s in the correct boxes.
I’m interested in your opinion as to which mode of transmission is more secure & the reasons upon which you based your assessment.
Do you think that ZModem is unsafe?
Why do you like Filezilla over a client like WinSCP or the FireFTP add-on?
I think the overall ease of use with an sftp client seals the deal. In just a couple of clicks you’ll have the file on the way with an almost instantaneous transfer. Do not be surprised to see bcbs turn off their modem bank as medicare contractors are slowly doing.
If you insist you’ll have to find a terminal emulator to run on windows 7.
A nearby Blue Shield had served as the Medicare contractor for many years (we used Zmodem with them) until the contract had been awarded to NGS, who promptly insisted upon FISS/DDE intermediaries.
This annoyed the daylights out of me because physicans face annual reductions in the reimbursement rate & with the additional expense of sending claims to NGS, it sent me over the edge.
Major annoyances can have silver linings. Our software/hardware vendor was non-cooperative & greedy in the transition. Thus began the journey to OpenEMR.
I can copy HyperTerminal from XP on the desktop which has a dualboot with Linux. I was afraid that I would need a terminal emulator. A new adventure with FireFTP then.