Name of Manual - Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota

Basic Character Set
Values in the Electronic
Transaction
Claims Filing
The AUC has published a best practice regarding utilization of the
basic character set values within the transaction data.
The basic character set includes some punctuation characters and
spaces. These values when used unnecessarily can cause issues
with matching to the payers’ enrollment for the provider or the
member; or may cause the data to be incorrectly
extracted/interpreted within the payers’ applications.
If any of the punctuation characters within the basic character set
are used as delimiters then they cannot be used in the transmitted
data within a data element.
Punctuation and spaces should only be utilized within the elements
when they add value to the data. They should not be used when
their usage is not essential to the interpretation of the data content.
Basic character set: uppercase letters (A-Z), numeric digits (0-9),
space ( ), exclamation point (!), double quote (“), single quote (‘),
ampersand (&), right parenthesis, left parenthesis, asterisk (*),
period (.), plus sign (+), comma (,), hyphen (-), forward slash (/),
colon (:), semicolon (;), question mark (?), and equals sign (=).
Even though the “@” character is in the extended character set it is
allowed for e-mail addresses within the PER segment. This
character must not be used as a delimiter.
Examples to illustrate best practice:
Description Incorrect Examples Correct Example
Name Titles (no
period should be
used).
Address – no
periods should be
used as part of the
address.
Commas and
periods should be
used at the end of a
sentence in a text
field to separate
from another
sentence within the
text field.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Provider Policy and Procedure Manual (05/10/12) 8-35
JR.
MR.
PhD.
M.D.
P.O.
AVE.
A PERIOD
WITHIN A
SENTENCE MAY
HAVE VALUE
DESCRIPTION OF
SERVICE IS ABC
JR
MR
PHD
MD
PO
AVE
A PERIOD
WITHIN A
SENTENCE MAY
HAVE VALUE.
DESCRIPTION OF
SERVICE IS ABC.