About

Some of the largest software companies in the world have relied on WPC’s expertise for specifications development, data architecture, quality assurance, and testing.

WPC is grounded with core values:

  • Thinking strategically and creatively in search of the best answers and approaches.
  • Developing trust-based relationships through putting our clients’ needs ahead of our own.
  • Persevering in difficult situations and working toward our goals with a sense of purpose and urgency.
  • Challenging ourselves every day to never settle for mediocrity and striving to always create value in everything we do.
  • Approaching each relationship with openness, inherently believing that the truth and facts will lead to success.

Company History and Current Publishing Work

WPC has participated in the development, maintenance, and implementation of EDI standards since their inception in 1975, primarily as contractor to the Transportation Data Coordinating Committee (TDCC), the Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA) and X12. WPC currently publishes and licenses all of X12’s work as well as several related code lists for other industry associations such as the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

WPC’s publishing work has reached hundreds of thousands, if not millions of customers, and the web resources it manages average approximately 10,000 unique visitors per business day.

WPC is also currently engaged by the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), providing online collaborative standards development and publishing tools for its Data Element Dictionary and External Code Lists.

One of WPC’s unique offerings is producing derivative works for these ANSI-accredited standards bodies, such as HTML, Table Data, XML Schema Definitions, and more to help implementers of these works.

Company Timeline
1974

Founder Steve Bass was hired by the Transportation Data Coordinating Committee (TDCC), the inventors of EDI as we know it today, as a graphic artist to draw flowcharts for the first publication of those EDI standards

Late 1970s

Bass proposed to TDCC that it was possible to vastly improve the appearance of the standards, modifying them from dot matrix to high quality photo typeset output

Mid 1980s

Bass worked for EDI, Inc., the pioneering EDI translator company, running pilots as an advocate for industry transaction standards; working with Service Merchandise and Brock Candy, as well as their respective trading partners

1988

WPC formally incorporated and began publishing EDI implementation guides for industry associations beginning with the Voluntary Inter-industry Communication Standards (VICS); Bass worked primarily with Levi Strauss on the first retail supply chain implementation

Late 1980s – Early 1990s

WPC began publishing for several industry associations, such as the American Petroleum Institute and the Association of American Railroads, as well as for corporations, such as Apple, IBM, and GE

1996

WPC was on the front lines of the original HIPAA law that included transactions and code sets

1998

WPC began to focus more on health care to support system integration and real analysis of health care data issues to solve problems as it had done successfully in other industries

1999

WPC worked with Microsoft to develop key artifacts for the BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA (a data integration engine) allowing data from multiple systems, both internally to an enterprise, and externally with their trading partners, to communicate with one another

2002

WPC opened an office near Microsoft in Seattle, Washington, establishing a West Coast presence and becoming a Microsoft Signature Partner

2006

Bass brought Andrew Fitzpatrick to the WPC team to focus on diversification and growth of its offerings

2011

WPC Services launched in Nashville, Tennessee to expand business from publishing to consulting services around health care and data related issues and intelligence

2013

NCPDP engaged WPC to leverage its online collaborative workspace and integrate its data element dictionary and external code lists into WPC’s online standards development solution

2015

WPC exited the consulting and health care–specific data analysis business to focus exclusively on supporting non-profit standards development organizations, such as X12 and NCPDP 

2018

NCPDP expanded its engagement with WPC to include the production of standardized machine-readable representations of its data element dictionary and external code lists

2019

WPC launched Glass, X12’s online standards viewer, including all versions and transaction sets published since 1987 and several supporting documents, with technical reports to be added in following months

Leadership

Steve Bass, the current President and Publishing Chief, founded WPC more than 40 years ago; Andrew Fitzpatrick, the current CEO, joined 15 years ago.

Steve Bass

Bass has 40 years of experience as a pioneer and leading expert in business-to-business electronic standards. Bass was on the original team that formalized EDI beginning in 1974. He oversaw the earliest pilots of EDI implementation, was a critical player in the introduction of healthcare and insurance to the world of EDI, and has extensive experience with automated typesetting systems and mark-up languages, including SGML, the precursor to XML.

Andrew Fitzpatrick

Fitzpatrick has more than 25 years of experience successfully leading the development and delivery of technology solutions to health care organizations in North America. He gained experience with a government-run health care provider and then moved to a major health care company, providing leadership and management of complex integrated health care systems including clinical, financial, and ERP solutions. In senior management roles, Fitzpatrick has managed geographically and functionally dispersed groups of technology professionals through mergers, acquisitions and transitions including merging start-up software companies’ operations while experiencing rapid growth.