Kaiser Permanente of Georgia, and Medica to Showcase Business Intelligence and Process Automation

SOUTHBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8, 2005--The Gartner Healthcare Summit--held on November 13--16 at the Hyatt Grand Cypress in Orlando, Florida--brings together IT executives from the healthcare payer and provider marketplace with healthcare technology vendors. Executives and vendors will gain critical market knowledge and build collaborative relationships in an uninterrupted setting.



The summit includes analyst content sessions, vendor case studies, peer exchange workshops, one-on-one meetings with Gartner analysts, and other collegial networking events. The event details are listed at http://www.healthcareitsummit.com.



ikaSystems will present three key case studies.



Passport Health Plan--a Medicaid managed care plan, administered by AmeriHealth Mercy--stabilizes professional and performance expenses using ikaSystems' Utilization Management System (ikaUM) to perform rigorous risk analysis and physician profiling. The resulting standardized evaluations compare PCPs and networks in terms of quality of care and cost. Since implementing ikaUM in 2000, Passport Health Plan has increased its membership over 30% and medical expenses per member per month (PMPM) have increased less than 5% per year, which is significantly lower than the national average.



Kaiser Permanente of Georgia automates and enhances the consumer health insurance application experience, encouraging consumers to embrace automation. Studies show that consumers are unwilling to complete tedious medical questionnaires. ikaSystems solves this problem by deploying dynamism and validation intelligence throughout the application process. This rapidly-growing consumer business is only cost-effective if entirely automated: quoting, medical underwriting, enrollment, payment collection, contract generation, and electronic dissemination to backend systems. Also discussed are rapid deployment time (under 6 weeks) and the drastically-reduced sales cycle.



Medica's custom online individual sales and underwriting system gives consumers and call center sales representatives the power to apply online using ikaSystems' transactional capability. ikaSystems provides an open platform for the collaborative exchange of information, and in effect, closes the loop between consumers, underwriters, and sales representatives. Since implementing ikaSystems' technology, Medica has seen a 15% increase in individual sales. Guided online enrollment workflow simplifies the application process by eliminating errors--missing or incomplete information is flagged at point of entry--and ensuring that applications are received completed. The online rating engine calculates plan premiums to eliminate miscalculated premiums, which speeds up the application and medical underwriting processes and decreases administrative costs.