What are the milestones for an implementation plan? What are the issues involved with each?
I disagree with the suggestion that there be an overall industry implementation plan, especially as it pertains to the implementation of NCPDP D0. In the pharmacy industry, the sheer volume of the claims being transmitted, combined with the fact that pharmacies will not dispense the medication to the patient without having received a reply from the claims processor regarding proper copay and payment information is cause to allow the pharmacy software vendors, pharmacies, and pbm/claim processors to have time to conduct a slow and methodical implementation. The initial test period should include voluntary participation by payers and pharmacies using a mix of canned tests so as to ensure that certain scenarios and claim types are tested, and also real claims. Ideally, a period of several days worth of claims should be able to be reprocessed to compare the actual results with those of the test system, giving everyone an ability to compare results and justify or correct any differences. In
