B.I.G.
Consultants
Rachel Foerster
B.I.G.
Senior Consultant
Rachel Foerster is a Senior Consultant with Boundary Information
Group headquartered in Denver and the Founder and CEO of Rachel
Foerster & Associates, Ltd. in Beach Park, Illinois, an independent
consulting practice founded by her in 1993 dedicated to assisting
the health care industry with the transition to Electronic Commerce.
She is well known within the EDI arena due to her leadership
positions in several industry organizations. In addition, her 22
years of experience with Baxter Healthcare Corporation, the world's
leading hospital supply company, included consulting and
implementation responsibilities for EDI for Baxter and its
customers. Her experience includes over 20 years designing,
developing and implementing a variety of proprietary and
standards-based EDI systems to support hospitals, distributors,
manufacturers and other organizations for on-line, batch and
interactive electronic linkages. Specific areas of focus included
HIPAA, materials management and financial EDI implementations.
Additionally, she has helped clients develop sound strategies and
implementation plans for EDI that ensured the achievement of
specific objectives.
Rachel was a U.S. designated EDI expert to the UN/CEFACT
Techniques & Methodologies Work Group, where she participated in the
global UN/CEFACT continuation of the ebXML™ Initiative's effort to
provide a common framework to enable the consistent use of XML for
global electronic business. Her distinguished career includes
leading the effort to introduce the EDI standards to the health
industry, past chair of the Health Industry Business Communications
Council’s (HIBCC) EDI Technical Committee, active membership at the
ANSI ASC X12 EDI Standards committee, which develops the standards
on which HIPAA’s electronic transactions are based, and active
participation in many of the WEDI SNIP work groups developing
guidance for the industry as it transitions to EDI required by
HIPAA. Rachel is a member of The EC Institute's Advisory Board, a
cooperative venture among Data Interchange Standards Association,
The Colorado Electronic Commerce Roundtable, the University of
Denver and other major universities, government agencies and
industries to create programs that will certify the professional
abilities of electronic commerce practitioners. She is also a member
of Health Level Seven (HL7), an ANSI-accredited and global standards
development organization that develops specifications that enable
disparate healthcare applications to exchange clinical and
administrative data, and HIMSS, the Health Information Management &
Systems. Rachel is also actively participating in the work of HITSP
to develop harmonizing and integrating standards that will meet
clinical and business needs for sharing information among
organizations and systems.
Rachel has presented and conducted numerous EDI workshops and
educational seminars for all levels of management for many payers,
health care providers, manufacturers, distributors, national EDI
associations, as well as companies in other industries and
governmental agencies. These include several HIPAA Summits, the
annual Data Interchange Standards Association Electronic Commerce
Conference, EDI in Government, HIBCC, EDI 2000, and Inside EDI
conferences, seminars sponsored by hospital associations in
California, Tennessee, HCFA, NEIC, HEDIC, the Mid-Atlantic Health
Congress, and the New Jersey Hospital Association’s Health, Research
and Education Trust, and various regional EDI User Groups. In
addition, Rachel was a member of the faculty of the Data Interchange
Standards Association EDI/Electronic Commerce seminars and was
formerly an Adjunct Lecturer for Healthcare EDI at the University of
Illinois, Chicago, Department of Health Information Management,
College of Associated Health Professions.
Rachel has published articles in Healthcare Automation, Surgical
Services, Medical Industry Information Report, Medical Products
Sales, Journal of the American Health Information Management
Association, Healthcare Purchasing News, EDI Forum, EDI World, and
the European Medical Electronic Data Interchange Newsletter. She has
authored Successfully Implementing EDI: A Project Team’s EDI
Planning Guide, EDI: A Strategic Approach for Implementation, and An
EDI Primer for Health Care. She is the co-author of An Executive
Primer: Health Care Reengineering, and An Executive Primer:
Information Technology Strategies—How to Formulate an Information
Technology Strategy to Ensure Competitive Advantage. Rachel studied
at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, Roosevelt University
and Mundelein College in Chicago.
Major consulting projects include:
- Providing on-going health care EDI and electronic messaging
standards subject matter expertise and staff support to the
Council for Affordable Healthcare and its Committee on Operating
Rules for Information Exchange (CORE), a multi-stakeholder
national effort which develops the health care industry’s
operating rules enabling interoperability between health care
providers, health plans, and clearinghouses for on-line real
time insurance eligibility verification and other administrative
transactions.
- Providing strategic recommendations and input to a major
health plan’s strategic planning efforts for HIPAA transactions
and code sets as well as conducting an overall HIPAA Compliance
Project evaluation to ensure that the client’s HIPAA project was
on track.
- Providing HIPAA EDI project management support and custom
staff training services to a major Blue Cross Blue Shield
insurance company which has responsibility for processing the
Federal Employees Program for government employees, dependents,
retired military and their dependents which select the Blue
Cross Blue Shield insurance option.
- Conducting numerous HIPAA Provider Awareness Seminars for
providers in three states over a two-year period for a major
Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance company
- Developing and conducting a focused HIPAA and healthcare
industry workshop for a special National Institute of Standards
& Technology (NIST) research laboratory to enable the
decision-making for NIST standards development strategies for
HIPAA electronic transactions
- Developing and conducting customized HIPAA electronic
transactions workshops focused on both the regulatory
requirements and technical specifications for all HIPAA
transactions for several major health plans and integrated
healthcare systems
- Assisting a major purchasing cooperative of floor covering
products and services retailers to develop a strategic, tactical
and comprehensive project plan along with business and IT
functional requirements for the creation of a flooring industry
electronic market. The client called in Rachel Foerster &
Associates to assist in developing a turn-around strategy
following a 2-year failed effort.
- Developing an IT and electronic business strategy and
architecture for a health care imaging products purchasing
cooperative of almost 100 independent x-ray and imaging products
dealers.
- Assisting a major life reinsurance company to develop an
electronic commerce business plan.
- Analyzing and designing an automated electronic contract
notification process using standards-based EDI and web-based
electronic information technologies for a major medical products
manufacturer and distributor.
- Analyzing business requirements and developing EDI
specifications for a leading medical technology product
manufacturer as part of its worldwide J.D. Edwards conversion
project. This effort also included managing and coordinating the
conversion of several thousand customers from a legacy
mainframe-based EDI system to an EDI/400 EDI system with minimal
customer impact.
- Developing a global EDI and product bar code strategy for
the global operating division of a major international
pharmaceutical manufacturer.
Prior to founding Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd. Rachel spent
22 years with Baxter Healthcare Corporation. A summary of her key
responsibilities while with Baxter includes:
EDI/ASAP Market Manager responsible for:
- Conducting market research and analysis to identify customer
business requirements
- Conducting market research and analysis to assess competitor
capabilities
- Identifying and developing business and functional
requirements for customer facing internal EDI and pre-order
processing systems
- Providing liaison to internal IS organization representing
multiple Baxter operating units for EDI and other
customer-facing systems needs
- Working with IS organization in the design, development and
deployment of new and/or enhanced EDI systems, both mainframe
host based as well as PC-based customer site
systems
- Supporting 13 regionally-located field customer EDI
implementation support specialists to identify new requirements,
resolve problems, aid in on-site EDI systems implementation
- Introducing X12 standards-based concepts to major software
vendors in the health care industry with the goal of persuading
them to implement support for EDI 850/855 PO & POA for hospital
medical products ordering
- Providing EDI training and education for corporate
management, field sales force, internal IS staff, field customer
support staff and customers
- Official representative to ANSI ASC X12 Standards
Development Committee
- Official representative and Chair of Health Industry
Business Communications Council EDI Technical Committee
EDI/ASAP Business Unit Liaison responsible for:
- Providing internal consulting and liaison between several
Baxter operating units and the IS organization for the
development of new and/or enhanced customer-facing systems
- Identifying business requirements for new and/or enhanced
customer-facing systems
- Managing implementation of EDI interfaces between Baxter and
its customers
- Developing functional systems requirements and work with
internal IS development staff to design, develop and deploy new
and/or enhanced systems
- Official representative to ANSI ASC X12 Standards
Development Committee
- Official representative and Chair of Health Industry
Business Communications Council EDI Technical Committee
EDI/ASAP Systems Project Leader responsible for:
- Designing, developing and deploying the first
mainframe-based, high-performance, integrated EDI system in the
health care industry
- Establishing and supporting communications connections to
several EDI Value-Added Networks and direct real-time online
communications with over 3,500 hospital customers
- Designing, developing and deploying first use of ANSI ASC
X12 EDI standards with Hospital Corporation of American
hospitals
- Designing, developing and converting mission-critical
proprietary EDI systems from Burroughs large systems platform to
IBM large systems platform supporting over 10,000 customer and
sales force remote dial-up terminals to new platform without
impact to users
- Providing training, education and technical support to the
EDI Help Desk and Customer Hotline support team
- Official representative to ANSI ASC X12 Standards
Development Committee
- Official representative to Health Industry Business
Communications Council EDI Technical Committee
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