topic Re: 834 files in SAS Programming

834 files

abqdiane — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 20:05:08 GMT

Hi,

Does anyone know how to import an 834 file, the format used by employers to communicate their employees' health insurance data, into SAS? Below is a screenshot form an example:

INS*Y*18*030*XN*A*E**FT~
REF*OF*152239999~
REF*1L*Blue~
DTP*336*D8*20070101~
NM1*IL*1*BLUTH*LUCILLE****34*152239999~
N3*224 N DES PLAINES*6TH FLOOR~
N4*CHICAGO*IL*60661*USA~
DMG*D8*19720121*F*M~
HD*030**VIS**EMP~
DTP*348*D8*20111016~
INS*N*19*030*XN*A*E***N*N~
REF*OF*152239999~
REF*1L*Blue~
DTP*357*D8*20111015~
NM1*IL*1*BLUTH*BUSTER~
N3*224 N DES PLAINES*6TH FLOOR~
N4*CHICAGO*IL*60661*USA~
DMG*D**19911015*M-HD*030**VIS~
DTP*348*D8*20110101~
DTP*349*D8*20111015~

Here is a crosswalk of some of the codes:

INS*Y	Member Level Detail
REF*OF	Subscriber Number
REF*1L	Group Sub-location Division (GSD)
DTP*336	Hire date
NMI	Employee Name
N3	Employee Street Address
N4	Employee City, State, Zip, Country
DMG	Member Demographics
HD	Coverage Data
DTP*348	Coverage Dates
DTP*349	Coverage End Date
INS*N	Dependent

Does anyone have any suggestions?

thanks,

Diane

Re: 834 files

jimbarbour — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 20:38:51 GMT

An 834 transaction is a specialized X12 format for EDI. Usually, specialized translation software is used. I'll Google it, but I don't know if SAS offers this type of translation.

Jim

Re: 834 files

jimbarbour — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 20:44:30 GMT

I turned up the below. I see that he mentions third party software.

Jim

Re: 834 files

jimbarbour — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 20:47:21 GMT

Here's a paper that discusses SAS and the 837 transaction. Perhaps you could do something similar for the 834, but as I mentioned usually specialized software is employed to do this.

https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings13/300-2013.pdf

Google some more, but my quick Googling didn't turn up anything that would indicate that SAS has a package to do this.

Jim

Re: 834 files

Reeza — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 21:05:37 GMT

Is it coming across as text or XML? As shown it's pretty trivial to parse it using a simple data step but I'm also guessing it gets more complicated, ie mulitple dependents and such. And this is just the registration files or do you also need to deal with claims files?

Re: 834 files

abqdiane — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 21:05:42 GMT

Thanks for checking. I was hoping that someone had written code for it. It's worth asking.

I'll take a look at the paper.

Diane

Re: 834 files

abqdiane — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 21:30:40 GMT

Hi,

Yes, there can be multiple dependents and a spouse or not. Sometimes there's a SSN and sometimes not.

My goal is to compare what is in the weekly 834 and a report from the enrollment system. Sadly, the 834 enrollment file is manually entered so we want to check the data entry. This is only for the enrollment file.

thanks for responding.

Diane

Re: 834 files

Reeza — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 21:51:57 GMT

Very rough idea of how you can get started - my coding for this kind of stuff is getting too rusty.

data have;
infile cards DSD dlm="*";
input one $ two$ @@;

if one="INS" and two = "Y" then do;
input @1 var1 $ VAR2 $ VAR3 $ (VAR4-VAR9) ($)
     / (var10-vAR12) ($)  
     / (var13-var15) ($)
     / (var16-vAR19) ($)
    /  (var20-VAR29) ($); 

end;
ELSE IF ONE = "INS" & TWO = "N" THEN DO;
input @1 var1 $ VAR2 $ VAR3 $ (VAR4-VAR10) ($)
     / (var10-vAR12) ($)  
     / (var13-var15) ($)
     / (var16-vAR19) ($)
    /  (var20-VAR25) ($); 
END;
cards;
INS*Y*18*030*XN*A*E**FT~
REF*OF*152239999~
REF*1L*Blue~
DTP*336*D8*20070101~
NM1*IL*1*BLUTH*LUCILLE****34*152239999~
;;;;
run;

proc print data=have;run;

Re: 834 files

abqdiane — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 00:05:32 GMT

Wow - this is great.
thanks,
Diane