Data Interface
- What data do we need?
- We need basic charge information that would typically be part of a pharmacy management system. At a minimum, we must have a way of identifying the drug, the patient, and the quantity dispensed. We will work with your IT department to identify specific data elements that may be available.
- What is the benefit of sending us the data electronically?
- Re-keying of data is avoided, which reduces the manual workload and avoids the introduction of keying errors.
- Our system is designed to quickly search through large quantities of raw data and identify the charges and patients that have a high probability of being recoverable.
- When a potentially recoverable charge is identified, the system automatically consolidates all of the necessary drug, patient, and doctor information so that the assistance program staff can generate the paperwork with only a couple of clicks.
- How do we get the data from you?
- Our goal is to make the data transfer as simple as possible for your pharmacy and IT staff. We only need a “batch” text file of charge records once a day, and we can accept it in almost any format that is convenient for you (fixed width, delimited, XML, etc.). Our preference is for a fixed width record, which is usually very simple for an IT department to export.
- What needs to be installed on your computers?
- We have a very simple, very small, executable program that looks in the dedicated folder and transfers a copy of the batch file to our web service. The program can either be left running in the background, where it will periodically check for new data, or it can be manually run once a day after the batch file is produced.
- Where does our upload application need to be installed?
- Our upload application can be installed on any desktop computer. Normally it would simply be put on the computer belonging to the patient assistance coordinator. The only requirements are that the computer be running a current version of MS Windows, have Internet access, and have rights to read and write to the folder where the batch data will be placed.
- Do we have remote access to the machine with the upload application?
- NO! Our upload application is simply a one-way file transfer program that cannot receive any data or instructions from us. It does not transmit any information from your computers, other than the batch file in the one dedicated folder, and it receives nothing from the outside other than an acknowledgement from us that the records were successfully uploaded.
- Will our application work through a proxy server?
- Yes. If your users must login to a proxy server in order to access the Internet, they will need to configure our upload application with their credentials and the proxy server IP address. The proxy information is only stored in a local configuration file, it is not transmitted to us.
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