product technical

[Stratford Software, Inc.]

Healthcare specialties:

physician
dentist
hospital (not all form types supported - especially for Medicaid programs)
anesthesiology
ambulance
dialysis
rural health
physical therapy
podiatrist
chiropractor
acupuncture
DME
We do not support pharmacy, but all others may be supported - this is not guaranteed. For example, we may support your specialty, but we may not do it in a way that is acceptable to you. We advise you to download our free trial software to determine whether the software meets your needs. Only you know for sure. Note that there is no difference at all in the functions included in the trial and the 'full' version. The only difference is in the maximum number of patients allowed in the database.

A single, simple-to-use set of screens for all specialties

The screens for physician, dentists, institutions are the similar. There are, of course, differences because the billing is different. Because the product is 30+ years old, we have been able to hide most of the differences.
This allows a billing service to have physician and dental and dialysis clients on the same network with only one master set of programs.
This allows a central computer service company to time-share many different clients and specialties on a simple, low-cost network. You can use an inexpensive Windows 2000 network for many clients (or Windows 20xx terminal server) that would otherwise require a large, expensive minicomputer or mainframe. The administration is little more than a stand-alone computer.
This makes the product easier (less expensive) to support
This make the training easier: we usually only need up to 5 hours one day for one person

All standard EDI (electronic claim) formats

ANSI 270-271 / 276-277 / 837-835 / 997 - we are compliant with v5010-A1 as of January 2007. We are evaluating 834/820 and 275. We believe that v5010 is needed before ICD10 procedure and diagnosis codes can be used in place of ICD9.
Most other healthcare related ANSI formats have been coded and may be supported in the future..
We have many of the special requirements of each carrier coded. We continue to enhance this daily. This function (especially with the ANSI format) is the major development effort at Stratford at this time. This development has priority. We can do that because the data entry, editing, etc. have been in a "maintenance mode" for years.
We have a comprehensive library of individual carrier's (Medicare, Medicaid, insurance companies, HMOs, etc.) special requirements. This library allows the software to edit the claims BEFORE they are transmitted. Critical errors will stop the claim (or the individual transaction) from transmitting. The user receives an audit that describes the missing or incorrect information. After correcting the error, the user can easily transmit the claim. For example: if the subscriber ID must be 9 or 11 characters in length and the first 2 characters must be alpha with an X as the last character, that requirement is built into the software for many payers.

Noridian (Medicare for California and other states) (was Palmetto before 9/16/2013
Blue Cross Blue Shield North Dakota (Medicare: many Western States, Alaska and Hawaii)
Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield (Medicare: Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico)
Travelers (Medicare for 4 states)
Medicare for all other states, examples: WPS (WI)
Medicaid for most states, examples: EDS (CA) - Not all form types are supported. Be sure you determine if we support the type you need before purchasing. For example we do not support type 3. In some cases you can get a clearinghouse to reformat your claims properly for types that are not built into the software. We do not support the custom forms by Denti-Cal, however you can transmit all claims that we have tested.
If the carrier will accept ANSI 837, we can usually have our software approved within 1 or 2 weeks and we do not charge extra for this service. You must subscribe to our regular support, of course.
Our software has been used, and is now being used, by carriers to test their new ANSI 837 programs. We have an extremely low/no cost program available for any third party payer in the United States. It is our company policy to do almost anything to see that one more healthcare provider transmits at least one more claim.

We have a library of individual clearinghouse's requirements.

Stratford software may be able to be used for transmission to most clearinghouses and/or payers as long as they will accept the ANSI 837 version 5010 A1.

HealthSmart/CareVu/
eSolutions
Medicare
Medicaid

Most clearinghouses charge setup fees and/or per claim fees. You must check with the payer/clearinghouse to determine what, if any, charges there are.

Stratford does not have any charges related to the transmission of claims such as sign-up fees or per-claim charges. Stratford only charges for support (optional) Note: the clearinghouse that you choose may charge you for services. Please check with them. Any information you receive from Stratford employees is not binding on the clearinghouse and they may (and do) change their policies without notice to us.

Standard forms

CMS 1500
CMS 1450 (UB04)
ADA

Software development

In 1977 we began developing the software on mini-computers with compilers popular at that time. We had to use assembly language and even machine-language to write our own record-locking code as it was not available with the compiler we were using. The operating systems of that day were solid as a rock and almost never had to be reset, unlike today's operating systems.

Our primary business during the first 4-5 years was as a billing service. We mailed out in excess of 110,000 statements per month. A large part of our business was 'time-sharing'. We sold time on our computers to large multi-specialty groups of physicians and dentists and even to competing billing services. That was before the days of EDI. EDI began with Medicare in the early 1980's. We were one of the first to transmit Medicare claims to Blue Shield of California - at that time it was the Medicare contractor for Northern California. We had to write our own modem-handling software as there was no communication software available for mini-computers as we have today. The compiler we used changed several times in the next 10 years, but the basic design philosophy of the database/table structure is the same now as it was then, even on our newest product. Of course, it has been updated to take advantage of the hardware and software advancements. The 'feature-set' has been enlarged as well.

Around 1988-89 we began using a compiler from a company that merged with Microsoft in 1992. Since that time, Microsoft has continued to develop and improve it. By 1993-94 we were able to migrate the last of our 'mini-computer' customers from the late 1970's - 1980's to the new, PC-based software product. We had one of the first, if not the first, healthcare billing software with 'windows', colors, and mouse-awareness (is that a word?).

This is the same compiler that is used to develop 'JFAST' (now called CFAST). This is a very large scale software project used by the US government military to manage resources. It is used as a general logistic planning tool as well as in military actions. It was first used extensively in the war in Kuwait, then Ethiopia and Somalia. The development of CFAST was fixed until 2010, so we believe this insures that Microsoft will continue to support and improve the product. This was the first 'Windows'(R) product used in the U.S. government.

This is the compiler used in the 'Chunnel' project. You can find more information if you 'google.com' the words: "vfp chunnel 'extremely large data sets' ". Chunnel is the term given to the Euro Tunnel that connects England and France underwater. It consists of more than 128 GB of data.

There are more, similar examples. This coupled with the fact that we are able to distribute the database structure royalty-free to our customers with no per-workstation or per-user fees makes it ideal for the very large data tables that our customers have.

Please see 'futures' page on this web site to read about our plans.

Installation on external drives (flash memory, 'cruzer', etc)

Here is more information as well as some examples and a 'walkthru' .

Other ways that you may be able to run the Stratford program.

We have been asked about running the Stratford program on the Apple Mac, Linux, Unix, etc. Here are some comments from our clients and others. We have not confirmed any of these and we have no way to support you. This section is not meant as a recommendation. All comments are about the Windows-compiled version of Stratford.

Crossover Office v4.2 under Linux and Mac
VMWare
VMWare Fusion in 'Unity' mode
Parallels Desktop on Apple Mac and MacBook
the Stratford 'dos-compiled' version on DOSEMU on Linux