Post by peter@crystalpm on Feb 20, 2014 11:06:57 GMT -6
ANSI 5010 batch files are very dense with information and were designed to be read by a computer, not a human. However, when issues arise between you and the billing company or clearing house it is helpful to know what is actually in the file. One way I have found to make the reading of these files easier is to reformat them with a program called VIM. Vim is a text editing program similar to Window's Notepad, but it has a few features that make it much better than Notepad for our purposes. Namely, that you can send it complicated find and replace commands.
You can download VIM from www.vim.org or get the windows version here. The program is a self-installer, and there are no special installation options to worry about so just pressing 'ok' to get the defaults should be fine. It does have a black window that pops up at the end of the installation sometimes, but this is normal and pressing 'enter' will close it again.
To open up our ANSI batch files, there are two easy ways. The first is to open Vim from the start menu and then drag the batch file into the Vim window. The second only works if Vim was installed correctly, and that is to find the batch file and single-click on it with the RIGHT mouse button to bring up a menu of options. One of the options on the menu should say 'Edit with Vim'.
Now that the file is open, it still hard to read. We want to give Vim a command to find all the '~' characters and press enter after it. This will separate out each segment on to its own line and make it much more manageable.
You can download VIM from www.vim.org or get the windows version here. The program is a self-installer, and there are no special installation options to worry about so just pressing 'ok' to get the defaults should be fine. It does have a black window that pops up at the end of the installation sometimes, but this is normal and pressing 'enter' will close it again.
To open up our ANSI batch files, there are two easy ways. The first is to open Vim from the start menu and then drag the batch file into the Vim window. The second only works if Vim was installed correctly, and that is to find the batch file and single-click on it with the RIGHT mouse button to bring up a menu of options. One of the options on the menu should say 'Edit with Vim'.
Now that the file is open, it still hard to read. We want to give Vim a command to find all the '~' characters and press enter after it. This will separate out each segment on to its own line and make it much more manageable.
press ':' to transfer the cursor to the bottom command line (if this inserted a ':' in the file, press 'ESC' and try again)
Type these characters between the quotes exactly (or copy/paste) "s/\~/&\r/g" and press 'enter'
You can use the mouse and menu options just like Notepad to search through the file and find the patient information you are looking for. Remember to not save these formatting changes, because the clearing house won't accept the file divided up like this.