Fully Integrated Web-Based Portal Strategy Expected to Increase Sales Productivity and Member Retention for Commercial and Medicare Business Lines While Reducing Administrative Costs
HealthNow New York Inc., which does business as BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York and BlueShield of Northeastern New York, has selected ikaSystems as its partner in implementing a comprehensive Web-based portal strategy that is expected to efficiently and rapidly grow its community-rated health insurance plan offerings.
HealthNow and ikaSystems, a provider of enterprise-level Web-based technologies for the payer market, began implementation in February and expect the full system to go live this summer. The anticipated result is an integrated online environment for the health plan’s employee base, brokers, members and employer groups that will significantly boost sales productivity and member retention while reducing administrative costs.
“We wanted to enhance our client experience with a Web-based technology platform that made it significantly easier for brokers and employers to conduct business with us online,” said Michael Giaquinto, HealthNow’s senior vice president/operations. “It quickly became clear that ikaSystems had the system architecture we wanted and the team to implement it in the timeframe we needed.”
“We chose ikaSystems as our strategic partner for three primary reasons: the breadth of its Web-based sales functionality, the integration of all component on one technology platform, and ikaSystems’ proven ability to deliver on those needs, quickly,” said HealthNow chief information officer Paul Stoddard. “ikaSystems is able to deliver a complete solution to us in a third of the time that other vendors would have required.”
“Health plans are seeing the greatest return on systems investments when they employ an integrated portal strategy, in which processes are fully automated and transactions pushed out to external users. ikaEnterprise, our Web-based platform, allows plans to deploy this strategy and thus effectively reduce administrative costs to the barest minimum. This is why our technology is being embraced so rapidly by commercial, Medicare and Medicaid plans,” said Ravi Ika, president of ikaSystems.
The end-to-end sales functionality starts withikaCRM, which generates a robust sales pipeline by automating lead generation activities and providing a centralized location to store leads, manage marketing campaigns and events, and track touches. Next, the following ikaPortals supply an unprecedented array of self-service capabilities to all participants in the sales process:
- Sales/Broker Portal,which sales staff and brokers can use to boost the number of leads moved to enrollment and significantly shorten the sales cycle. The user-friendly online environment allows sales/brokers to generate more quotes and provide prospects with customized health plan options. In turn, prospects can easily review quotes, select the plan that is right for them, and initiate payment — entirely online.
- Employer Portal,whichenhances customer satisfaction and retention by allowing employers to complete a range of functions online, such as roster management, off-cycle transactions and retroactive adjustments, electronic billing/reconciliation, employee/dependent status updates, reporting and payment. These and other functions contribute to reducing paperwork and redundant data entry on the part of employers’ human resources staff.
- Member Portal,which distributes administrative tasks to plan members — selection of plan options, cost and benefit comparisons, family information updates, requests for new or additional ID cards, inquiries about specific plan benefits — eliminating paper-based applications and reducing errors to cut administrative costs. Members can also access an array of array of self-care tools ranging from wellness to disease management and including personal health records.
- Admin Portal,which allows health plan administrative staff to perform tasks on behalf of other constituents as well as perform an array of other functions online, such as enrollment and renewal, underwriting, billing and accounts receivable, customer service complaints, cost modeling and actuarial activities.
To completely integrate the sales cycle, HealthNow will add ikaBilling and ikaCommissions modules for electronic premium billing, reconciliation and payment as well as commission calculations for sales and brokers.
Finally, as an additional step to increase efficiency and cut costs for the organization, HealthNow will implement ikaMedicareGateway,an innovative Web-based solution that automates the complexity of CMS data exchanges, delivering greater accuracy and speed to Medicare enrollment and membership/payment reconciliation. The result is dramatically reduced administrative costs, increased compliance conformance and higher levels of member satisfaction through more streamlined process management.
For more information about the ways in which ikaEnterprise is helping organizations thrive, even in challenging economic times, the company encourages attendance at America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) Institute 2009, being held June 3 through June 5 in San Diego. ikaSystems clients will be sharing case studies in ikaSystems booth 501 that describe both best practices and results. Please visit www.ikasystems.com for details.
About HealthNow New York Inc.
HealthNow New York Inc. is one of New York State’s leading healthcare companies, providing quality healthcare and innovative solutions for more than 836,000 members. Headquartered in Buffalo, New York, HealthNow does business as BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, BlueShield of Northeastern New York, HealthNow New York and Brokerage Concepts Inc. (BCI). In 2008, company revenues grew to nearly $2.27 billion. For more information please visit www.healthnowny.com.
About ikaSystems Corp.
ikaSystemsis healthcare payers’ premier provider of Web-based ERP technology for process automation and intelligence management. ikaEnterprise, the company’s flagship product, automates all key processes in the payer business cycle, supporting commercial, Medicare and Medicaid lines of business. The system consists of five stand-alone, self-service Web portals for sales/broker, administrative, employer, member and provider use, each of which are tightly integrated with business intelligence and transactional systems for core claims adjudication, care management and proactive quality measurement and reporting. Using our agile, modular technology, organizations can move quickly to lower administrative and medical care expenses through greater automation and highly intelligent decision-making. To learn more, please visit www.ikasystems.com.
Contacts:
ikaSystems
Sandy Cummings, 774-760-1694
Vice President,
Marketing
scummings@ikasystems.com