This is the success story of a large public-school consortium realizing significant time and cost savings working with HCIQ.
Manual entry of health plan data was a time-consuming and error-prone process for the SW Ohio Educational Purchasing Council (EPC). Health Cost IQ (HCIQ) streamlined its process, and as a result, EPC has saved thousands of hours of time and is realizing more accurate reporting. They now make evidence-based, data-driven decisions regarding their health plan, resulting in greatly reduced administrative costs.
The Problem
EPC, an Ohio-based public school consortium of over 150 school districts, was facing significant challenges in processing and interpreting their health plan data. Their benefit plan administrator spent countless hours manually inputting health plan premium data into spreadsheets supplied by insurance carriers. This process was necessary for every district and every health plan, including the number of lives per health plan and district, the coverage level of each life per plan, Cobra premiums, and stop-loss calculations. Every step was time-consuming, prone to error, and had to be repeated monthly. This manual, low-tech system needed a high-tech overhaul to automate the data input process from start to finish.
The Solution
HCIQ reinvented EPC’s labor-intensive process and implemented a new, automated data management and processing method that eliminated 99% of the administrator’s manual data entry work. Utilizing HCIQ’s custom-developed web application, the plan administrator’s sole entry work was to input monthly premiums.
Additionally, HealthAnalytIQ, HCIQ’s proprietary SaaS platform, now pulls monthly data directly from medical carriers, PBMs, and other data vendors into EPC’s enterprise data warehouse to calculate metrics such as number of lives, coverage levels, admins fees, and more. This new system completely eliminates what had been a time-consuming process for the plan administrator. Health plan data is now presented in a live, interactive dashboard for EPC’s stakeholders to review wherever and whenever it’s needed.
The Result
HCIQ’s innovative and automated data management and processing methods have made manual data entry a thing of the past for EPC, greatly optimizing their workflow efficiency. In addition to a highly upgraded data warehousing solution, processes, and workflows, HCIQ has equipped EPC with predictive analytics, risk stratification, risk modeling, population health management, and other informative business analytics dashboards and reports. These sophisticated analytics now allow EPC to accurately predict, interpret, and act on their health plan data. They also empower them to make more evidence-based, data-driven decisions regarding their health plan needs to improve member care and reduce health plan costs.
HCIQ’s solution has provided EPC with the following benefits:
- Thousands of administrative hours saved annually
- Timelier and more accurate enterprise-level reporting
- A fully functional enterprise data warehouse solution that automatically acquires and processes data from multiple carriers and vendors on an ongoing basis
- A single source of truth for all enterprise data-related questions and issues
Additionally, HCIQ has developed a close and trusting working relationship with EPC. This opens the door for honest conversations about EPC’s needs. The two groups anticipate a long-term working relationship, with many years of time and cost savings still to come.