Customers Identifiers in Pharmaceutical Chargebacks EDI 844
Customer Identifiers in Pharmaceutical Chargebacks EDI 844
Utilizing all available customer identifiers in pharmaceutical chargebacks EDI 844 submission is important for customer eligibility verification and various aspects of indirect sales analysis. Validation rules based on provided customer information are discussed at length here.
Pharmaceutical chargeback request must contain indirect customer information for the submission to be valid. The mandatory customer information outlined by HDMA specifications is limited to just one industry identifier.
Currently, most wholesalers provide customer name and address of the ship-to location, as well as several identifiers.
Identifying indirect customers is important for assigning customer Class of Trade, determining the customer eligibility to purchase on a submitted contract, and for tracking contract usage and sales history.
HDMA specifications list the following types of indirect customer identifiers to be used in EDI 844 chargeback submissions:
11 – for DEA number
21 – HIN number.
PI – for 340B ID
UL – for GLN.
The current usage of these codes by different wholesalers is as following: Cardinal Health is currently using DEA, HIN and 340B ID. Cencora (formerly AmerisourceBergen) uses all four types of identifiers. Dakota Drug uses HIN and 340B ID. FFF Enterprizes utilizes all four standard codes and, on occasion, custom code ZZ – – for mutually agreed customer IDs. Henry Schein and Morris and Dickson supply DEA, HIN and 340B ID. McKesson uses the standard four types and sometimes is using an additional code ZZ.
The values provided with the code ZZ are usually not easy to decipher. GLN identified seems to always be provided in addition to one of the standard customer identifiers.
The number and sequence of the customer codes in the EDI 844 pharmaceutical chargeback submission lines also vary between the wholesalers.
Cencora will provide DEA and GLN codes before providing HIN code. Cardinal Health usually provides only one customer code. McKesson may provide all four types of customer IDs in one chargeback submission line, with no predictable sequence in which customer codes should be expected.
Relasoft Pharma Suite reads all identifiers and uses all of them to address processing and analytical tasks.
Conclusion
The chargeback processing software should collect all indirect customers identifiers submitted on chargeback request lines, and analyze all these customer IDs when implementing rules for contract eligibility, Class of Trade assignment or sales analysis.