Most doctors not ready for Oct. 16 HIPAA deadline: feds ease standards slightly: Stransmitting electronic claims at issue.

Harry Reynolds is worried.

Mr. Reynolds is responsible for making sure that his health plan, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, is ready on Oct. 16, the deadline for complying with the part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that regulates electronic health transactions.

That means making sure providers who contract with the plan will be ready to transmit electronic claims that comply with the new law. The health plan has tried everything: provider outreach, educational manuals, you name it. It has even set up a Web site where providers and clearinghouses can test their new claims formats with the plan, free of charge, as often as they like.

The plan receives claims from more than 6,300 providers who transmit through 544 different "portals": vendors, clearinghouses, and the like.

As of early August, only 11 of those 544 portals had indicated that they were interested in doing any testing.

"Everybody seems to be running down to the last minute to get HIPAA ready," said Mr. Reynolds, the plan's vice president for HIPAA and information compliance officer in Durham. He pointed out that the top 25 portals account for 73% of the plan's electronic claims, "but the 519 others equal 27%, and [getting them ready] is a little like hand-to-hand combat."

As concerned as he is about HIPAA compliance, Mr. Reynolds became a lot less worried in July. That's when the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for enforcing HIPAA, issued a three-page document that relaxed some of the compliance requirements.