Practice management

COLUMBIA, S.C.-- Following health insurance scams that have hit South Carolina recently, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina has added new tools for consumers to use to report fraud.

Standard Insurance Co., a subsidiary of StanCorp Financial Group Inc., Portland, Ore., has launched enhancements to its AdminEASE plan administration tools to enable its clients to manage more aspects of their insurance plans online.Employers can now initiate claims and analyze claims experience as well as check the status of insurance applications that require medical underwriting. The AdminEASE plan administration tools are available to The Standard's group disability, life and dental insurance customers at no additional charge.

COLUMBIA, S.C.-- Insurance Services Office Inc. (ISO) has launched the new Microsoft .Net-ready version of its ISO Claims Outcome Advisor (COA) personal injury claims management solution. COA Release 3.1 offers major new features, including the Treatment Protocols function and enhancements to the COA Medical Library and Settlement Analyzer tool. This will enable claims handlers, managers and third parties across the entire enterprise to manage information about personal injury claims via a secure Web browser, thereby speeding up claims resolution, improving accuracy and ensuring best practices.

FARMINGTON, Conn.--Insurix, Inc., a provider of Web-based insurance sales and administration platforms, announced today that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care has successfully completed the launch of "Easy Online Renewal" for brokers. The Insurix-based system allows Harvard Pilgrim sales account executives, underwriters and third party brokers to instantly access and manage small-group renewals from inception through renewal presentation to case acceptance. With the Insurix platform, users can monitor and act upon all key events in the renewal process, resulting in improved retention rates and better customer service.

COLUMBUS, Ohio-- Ringing cell phones are a welcome sound to Nationwide, so long as the company's longtime jingle is playing. Nationwide is one of the first companies in the U.S. to offer an advertising jingle as a ring tone. Trendwatchers have dubbed the phenomena "jingle casting."

Rapidly submitting a timely First Notice of Loss (FNOL) report for a commercial auto or property insurance claim leads to faster settlements and satisfied claimants. The Hartford Financial Services Group, Hartford, Conn., now enables its independent insurance agents to electronically initiate the claim process for their clients.The Hartford, which boasts a strong record of deploying advanced technology for improved agency interaction, is now enabling independent agents to electronically submit a commercial auto or property FNOL, with attachments, from their Applied agency management system. It does this using IVANS Transformation Station, a managed data exchange using Web services and ACORD XML for real-time transactions between agency and carrier systems.

Blue Cross of California, Thousand Oaks, Calif., has expanded its physicians technology initiative to include 1,040 safety net physicians in California. Traditionally, safety net physicians provide care to the uninsured, poor and low-income patients, including those enrolled in the Medi-Cal and Healthy Families insurance programs.With an additional $2 million in funding, this technology initiative will help these physicians improve patient care, achieve greater efficiency and improve administrative functions. These new technologies are intended to provide greater access to information and data exchange via the Internet or wireless handheld devices.

For years, life insurance providers and their agents have relied on obtuse, text-heavy sales presentations to their individual customers. Too often, though, poor sales presentation tools fail to enlighten individuals concerning the magnitude of a life purchase.

WASHINGTON-- Millions of Americans buying health insurance on their own have a wide variety of products from which to choose, and most select plans very similar to the coverage available to working people in employer-sponsored groups.

Skilled drivers have fewer accidents. That's the logic behind a unique auto insurance program devised by Hibernian General Insurance, a Dublin, Ireland-based motor, home, farm and commercial insurance company that claims 26% of the Irish market.Launched in 2001, the program is called Ignition, and it targets inexperienced drivers with clean driving records who drive small cars. Those drivers who meet these criteria can receive auto premium discounts from Hibernian of 20% to 40% for successfully completing a one-day, advanced-driver training course, which is run by the U.K.-based Institute of Advanced Motorists.

It's no secret that for insurers, aligning technology staffs and business units into a full partnership has been challenging. Frederick Matteson, the newly appointed chief information officer for Novato, Calif.-based Fireman's Fund Insurance Co., isn't able to fully grasp the automation-related woes that have bedeviled insurers. That's because Matteson has deftly been able to avoid them himself.Having spent a number of years as an executive in the brokerage industry, Matteson championed the concept of total alignment between IT and business long before it became commonplace. A proponent of disciplined strategic scenario planning, Matteson has a keen sense of determining early on whether to expand or reduce a corporatewide initiative, including those centered on information technology.

Unlike previous industry attempts to standardize data exchanges between carriers, agents and third-party partners, it appears that XML is the real deal. Still, the industry has a long way to go before support for ACORD XML turns into widespread adoption.ACORD's XML specifications-covering property/casualty, life, and reinsurance- were designed for transferring data across firewalls, but some carriers are exploring use of the standards as a cost-effective internal integration tool for extracting data from legacy systems. In addition to controlling costs and opening access, such internal data integration capabilities may also help companies meet growing demands from regulators for increased accountability in internal operations.

In a legal battle stemming from actions Allstate Insurance Co. took in 1999 to launch its groundbreaking multi-channel sales strategy, a federal judge has absolved the company of age discrimination. But Allstate is not off the hook yet.The judge's ruling also has cleared the way for terminated Allstate agents to sue the Northbrook, Ill.-based carrier under class-action status for other charges, including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duties and violation of other federal laws, including the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

The number of career agents-the largest distribution channel for life insurance-dropped significantly in a decade, down from 238,000 in 1990 to 178,000 in 2000. In addition, by 2010, 13.2% of the U.S. population will be 65 or older.These demographics present life insurers with product, distribution and operational challenges as fewer agents are available to sell new-sometimes complex-products to consumers who are planning for their retirement years.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island needed to get a handle on lengthy call center calls, but not at the expense of reducing customer service. The Blues plan found a solution that accomplished these and other management goals.Time is a critical element of virtually every business process, but it is particularly crucial for customer service. When Providence-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI) decided to improve its call center operations, it established several goals, one of which was to reduce the average handling time per call by 20%.

A wise insurance executive-perhaps a chief information officer-once stated: "The strategies that worked for us in the past are the same ones that will cause us to fail in the future. That's because those strategies are only competitive for awhile."Carl Ascenzo, chief information officer for Boston-based Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, didn't deliver this proclamation, but he easily could have. Over the years, in a career spent at Aetna Health Plan and PriceWater-houseCoopers before coming to BCBSMA, Ascenzo has seen things that were seemingly built to last fall by the wayside.

Barbara Piehler represents a new breed of corporate CIO, one that no longer requires extensive information technology experience. In the insurance industry, this trend has been reinforced recently through the appointment of several CIOs who have built their reputations on the business side of the industry.But, while many of these executives eventually blended IT with business competency prior to taking over as CIO, Piehler, who is senior vice president, information systems, and CIO for Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., had only accumulated about a year of information systems' experience by the time she assumed the CIO position in October 2002.

Recurring payments offer the insurance industry a simple, yet extremely powerful, customer service solution that has the potential to yield hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings, improve cash flow, increase productivity and provide a competitive advantage.Also known as automatic bill payment and direct payment, recurring payments enable customers to authorize companies to automatically charge the amount owed on a payment card on a regular basis. Payments may be collected monthly, quarterly, or at whatever interval the consumer and the service provider establish.

Nationwide Financial, Columbus, Ohio, is offering an online marketing tool to help investment professionals grow their businesses and support the long-term investment needs of their clients. Investment Selector is an online quarterly report that recommends investment options and percentage allocations for The BEST of AMERICA variable products. Investment Selector uses research and evaluation methods developed by Morningstar Associates LLC, a registered investment advisor and a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar Inc. Investment Selector targets the investments that fulfill five allocation models developed through a collaboration with Ibbotson Associates.

Atlanta-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia has launched the Clear Claim Connection, an online product and service for its network providers. This product, created by McKesson Corp., enables BCBSGa to share with network providers the auditing rules and clinical rationale which exist in the claims billing and auditing code system used by BCBSGa.John Watts, president and chief executive officer of BCBSGa, says, "This important service will enable network physicians and their office staffs to review our payment methodology online. By providing this service, we hope to make our reimbursement policies more readily accessible and reduce misunderstandings among providers, members and BCBSGa."