II. NATIONAL UNIFORM BILLING COMMITTEE RESPONSIBILITIES
A. Responsibilities
The NUBC is responsible for the following functions:
1. Maintaining the integrity of the data set and
physical layout of the hard copy billing form
(currently defined as the UB-92); as well as, national
EDI transaction sets, the remittance advice data set;
and, other related HIPAA transactions defined in the
final rule. The activities include assignment of codes
and logical placement of information within the
transaction standards along with printing
specifications.
2. Maintaining the integrity of the data element
technical field attribute specifications for use in
national EDI billing and remittance transaction sets
and other related business applications. (These
activities include, but are not limited to,
development of national implementation guides for
fixed-length electronic file formats and ANSI ASC X12
approved health care transaction sets.)
3. Identifying and addressing key areas for
national action and defering state issues to the
SUBCs.
4. Acting in an advisory role on SUBC issues by
providing clarification and recommendations.
5. Monitoring and reviewing overall national
application of uniformity by provider/payer
operation/utilization as reported by its membership
and/or SUBCs.
6. Maintaining an ongoing interface with national
health care EDI associations, committees, government
advisory committees and other work groups to protect
the integrity, security and uniformity of use of the
NUBC approved data elements and coding values in
billing and payment applications.
7. Supporting, maintaining and coordinating
standard health care coding tables used in national
EDI health care billing, payment, and other related
EDI business applications.
8. Managing the use of the national data sets in
order to avoid proliferation of duplicate and/or
redundant billing, remittance, or other related
business data sets, and to assure uniformity of
information being reported.
B. Activities
Consistent with these functions, the NUBC will:
1. Provide a central contact person for
correspondence in the person of the NUBC chair.
2. Require each NUBC member to retain a direct
liaison with their respective constituencies and to
provide technical assistance and guidance. In order to
maintain the appropriate operating environment, NUBC
members will coordinate policy or technical issues
with their respective SUBC counterparts when national
billing, remittance, and other related business
conflicts are identified.
3. Provide invitations to other health care
industry organizations and/or interested parties to
attend and participate in scheduled open meetings in
support of appropriate agenda items.
4. Maintain a formal methodology (See Section III)
for handling requests for change to:
- NUBC’s national data set, definitions,
field attributes, specifications and procedures;
-
NUBC’s national coding structure(s) for
appropriate field locations; and
- NUBC’s hard copy bill format and printing
specifications.
- HIPAA’s Implementation Guides –
coordinating with the appropriate standards
development organizations and other data content
committees.
5. Records and maintains the "official
actions" of the NUBC.
6. Manages the "official technical and
informational content of the data set" for use by
the institutional health care community for billing
and remittance transactions, and other related
transactions and/or applications.
7. As necessary, the NUBC will review and discuss
state’s information, or state SUBC manuals, and/or
supplemental materials in an attempt to identify the
amount of state deviation from the national
specifications which hampers billing and remittance
and recommend workable solutions.
8. Monitors and records SUBC use of reserved coding
ranges and/or unlabeled field locations. Identifies
potential use of national data elements and resolves
any problems with such use at a scheduled NUBC meeting
or NUBC conference call.
9. Maintains a direct and ongoing liaison with
national EDI health care associations, other data
content committees, government advisory committees and
other work groups. In this capacity, the NUBC
representative shall keep the organization it
represents informed of all NUBC activities.
