Changes to Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) ECME, Integrated Billing (IB), Pharmacy Data Management, Outpatient Pharmacy and Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy (CMOP) application software are being requested by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Chief Business Office (CBO) eBusiness Solutions to comply with the legislative changes mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) as amended by Public Law (P.L.) 111-148, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
VHA uses the following standard Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transactions in support of its third-party pharmacy revenue and collections operation:
 National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) Pharmacy Transactions
VHA has updated its current HIPAA NCPDP pharmacy transaction standards to the current D.0 version as required by a previous HIPAA mandate. To maintain HIPAA compliance, VHA must implement periodic subsequent NCPDP releases to the D.0 standard and implement new data fields and data field values that continue to be updated in support of the External Code Lists (ECL) as established by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for NCPDP standards. VHA must address business changes and software system impacts that will result from final rules published by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to meet PPACA legislative requirements.