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In most organizations, paper correspondence is delivered to a mailroom, where it is manually sorted and routed to the appropriate department or person. When information on paper is replaced entirely by electronic mail, organizations will face the challenge of creating and managing an electronic mailroom.
The key to operating an effective electronic mailroom is the use of appropriate data standards, many of which are electronic equivalents of paper mail-handling processes. The best-known data standards for electronic commerce are the American National Standards Institute ASC X12 transaction standards. Most healthcare organizations are familiar with X12 standards for such business functions as electronic healthcare claims and healthcare claim payments and remittance advice. Less well known is the X12 standard that directs EDI messages to the proper endpoint the electronic equivalent of a standard paper envelope.
EDI Envelopes
Just as paper envelopes provide routing instructions for paper mail, X12 envelopes contain the addresses that direct EDI messages to the appropriate parties. Each X12 envelope has a series of characters called segments that identify the beginning and end of an EDI message. The letters "ISA' indicate the beginning of a message and provide the address to which the EDI message should be sent. The end of the message is indicated by the letters "IEA." These beginning and end...