Linda Wilgus opened the meeting by introducing the first speaker, Elizabeth Merciers. She works for the ISMA and gave a legislative update, highlighting issues she thought would be of interest to our group. Those included certificate of need, specialty care facilities and the healthy Indiana project.

The second speaker was George Raymond, an attorney and vice-president of HR for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. He facilitated a roundtable discussion on hot topics in human resources. This discussion continued through lunch.

The third and final speaker was Connie Menale from Anthem’s provider relations department. Connie has been with Anthem for 25 years so is well-versed on how Anthem works and was very helpful in answering questions. Some salient points:

• Anthem will be making available provider field representatives sometime this summer.
• NASCO claims are sent to Louisville where they are adjudicated for pricing information and forwarded to the local plan. The local plan processes the claim, sends an explanation of benefits to the patient and notifies Louisville of how to pay the claim. Louisville then issues the check to the provider. The provider should not be told to contact the local plan to resolve claim processing issues.
• Expect that by 2005, Anthem will have converted policy identification numbers from social security numbers to an internally assigned number.
• Anthem Benefit Administrators – Anthem reprices only. If there are any issues these should be taken to the provider representative.

Linda Myers, IRBMA President, opened the business meeting at the conclusion of the general meeting. The following issues were presented:

• The TriMed A/R survey was distributed to all members.
• Treasurer’s Report: Total assets = $24311.10
• The Coding Seminar that we co-sponsored with the ISMA netted IRBMA $2451.73. We discussed the possibility of sponsoring another coding seminar and including radiation oncology coding
• The next ISMA Coalition meeting is 19 March 2004
• The joint IRS/IRBMA meeting is 17 April 2004 at 4:30
• The next IRBMA meeting is 18 August 2004

The meeting was adjourned at 2:35 p.m.

Respectfully submitted by Deb Overcash, substituting for Cathy West, Secretary