Delimiters

In an HIPAA message, the various delimiters are part of the syntax, dividing up the different elements of a message. The delimiters used in a message are defined in the interchange control header, the outermost layer enveloping the message.

For this reason, there is flexibility in the delimiters that are used. No suggested delimiters are recommended as part of the HIPAA standards, but the industry-specific implementation guides do have recommended delimiters.

The default delimiters used by the HIPAA OTD Library are the same as those recommended by the industry-specific implementation guides. These delimiters are shown in Table 2–1.

Table 2–1 Default Delimiters in the HIPAA OTD Library

Type of Delimiter	Default Value
Segment terminator	~ (tilde)
Data element separator	* (asterisk)
Subelement (component) separator	: (colon)

Within eXchange, delimiters are specified at the enveloping level. The delimiters defined for an envelope apply to all transactions in the same business service (a predefined dialog between the two parties).

If you do not specify delimiters and do not override them in the payload transactions fed into FROMINTERNAL, eXchange expects the default delimiters shown in Table 2–1.

---

Note –

It is important to note that errors could result if the transmitted data includes any of the characters that have been defined as delimiters. Specifically, the existence of asterisks within transmitted third-party validation data is a known issue in HIPAA and can cause problems with translation.

---

See Element Separator for information on the ePM delimiter parameter.