Health Insurance Case Study

“What started as a solution for a very
specific need has evolved to help our
business in ways we never anticipated.”
David Abernathy, Executive Director of Health Insurance Plan Administrators
The Challenge:
• Cut costs, improve quality and accuracy, and shorten turnaround
time for producing and distributing enrollment booklets.
• Provide a centralized point of access for updating documents.
The Solution:
• Provide document management services, including customized
enrollment kits and integrated, total connectivity.
• Create digital document library for company-wide
document access.
The Results:
• Reduced turnaround time for producing and distributing
enrollment kits by more than 75%.
• Improved accuracy and quality, enabled one-to-one marketing
and lowered costs by nearly 40%.
Real People. Real World Solutions.
Health Insurance Plan Administrators, Inc. Case Study
Client Profile
Health Insurance Plan Administrators, Inc., is a
for-profit entity owned by HIP Health Plan of
New York, one of the largest not-for-profit
health care companies in the United States.
Health Insurance Plan Administrators provides
fulfillment services for its parent company, as
well as for HIP Health Plan of Florida and other
health service organizations. These services
include materials ranging from member kits
and annual reports to training manuals and
sales presentations.
The Challenge
Throughout their respective states, HIP Health
Plan of New York provides health coverage to
more than 800,000 members, while HIP Health
Plan of Florida covers some 220,000. A
primary goal of both companies is to grow
membership through continuously enhanced
customer services.
Among the companies’ most important customer
contacts are the pre- and post-enrollment
booklets and member kits sent to current and
prospective policyholders.
For years, production of the booklets cost an
average of $5.75 each. In addition to cutting
the costs of the booklets, Health Insurance
Plan Administrators wanted to improve their
quality and reduce the turnaround time of
producing and distributing them.
Health Insurance Plan Administrators also
wanted to establish an internal Digital Library
so its clients’ various departments could easily
update and revise the various documents
included in each booklet or membership kit.
Critical materials needed to look
better, work harder.
According to Ava Reinstein, director of
Fulfillment Services, her group produces
approximately 150,000 kits a month, from twopage
letters to large member packages, for HIP
Health Plan of Florida.
“Before we were able to get our arms around
this project, we used to print lots of material
that ended up as waste,” Reinstein said.
“Producing the kits was labor-intensive and
time-consuming and materials were quickly
outdated.”
Reinstein noted that a kit was only as accurate
as the person hand-assembling it. During busy
enrollment periods, temps often assisted in
compiling the materials and information could
sometimes be inconsistent with members’
expectations.
“Issues of quality control, relevant content and
user-friendly materials are important enough in
themselves,” Reinstein said. “Add accuracy,
compliance and privacy to the mix and it can
be pretty serious if a member gets the wrong
policy information.”
Real People. Real World Solutions.
Quality and technical
assurance were a must.
According to Reinstein, the reason Health
Insurance Plan Administrators contacted Xerox
about print on demand was a combination of
two things: the quality of Xerox equipment and
the assurance of the technical expertise needed
to bring the project to completion.
“It’s one thing to be able to provide the hardware,”
she said. “It’s another thing to get it to
produce what you want. We found Xerox’s
equipment top-notch and their technical
expertise amazing.”
The Solution
Following an assessment of needs, Dave
Harris, Xerox Enterprise Document Specialist,
proposed five different scenarios. Each
included varying price points and covered
issues such as compatibility problems with
other equipment.
Although Health Insurance Plan Administrators
initially did not want to discuss the copy center,
Xerox put forward the advantages of an
integrated print center that connected all their
employees with a centralized reproduction
department.
“We built credibility by logically showing
the facts,” Harris said. “Eventually, we got
to the point where we realized we were no
longer trying to sell a product, but were
structuring a solution.”
Xerox brings the knowledge
to make the solution work.
Xerox also provided an Industry Business team
that created and managed the complete plan
from beginning to end.
The primary application is enrollment kits,
which today are personalized to prospective
members. In fact, instead of getting the usual
collection of disparate, generic materials,
prospects actually receive a personalized
bound and finished book that might run 150 to
300 pages.
To accomplish this, the Xerox team proposed a
mix of hardware and document management
software. Included were Xerox DocuTech
Production Publishers, a Xerox DocuPrint
Production Printer, Bourg® binders and a pair
of Xerox NPS MICR printers.
A key component of the solution was Xerox
DigiPath software. This powerful digital
printing solution enables: effortless hard-copy
input; paper and digital document integration;
file storage; and remote printing capabilities.
To ensure the smoothest possible operation,
three Xerox Business Services experts staff the
print production center for Health Insurance
Plan Administrators.
One-to-one communications
improves customer satisfaction.
According to John B. Jones, Vice President and
General Manager of Healthcare for Xerox
Global Services, 9 out of 10 consumers want
information about their health plan that is
personally relevant to them. Integrating this
information into a single source makes it
easier to locate and reference.
“We built a table from benefit codes for
every possible document or type of insurance
coverage,” Harris said. “Now, instead of a temp
scrutinizing a list of codes and fulfilling an
order, data comes from the mainframe, and the
Xerox system automatically assembles and
personalizes the booklet with the policyholder’s
name, address, dependents and other
plan-specific information.”
“Because document
changes are digital,
updates are a snap
and we don’t have a
lot of unused inventory
sitting on the shelf.”
David Abernethy,
Executive Director of Health
Insurance Plan Administrators
Health Insurance Plan Administrators, Inc. Case Study
© 2002 XEROX CORPORATION. All rights reserved. XEROX®, DocuTech®, DocuPrint®, DigiPath® and The Document Company® are registered trademarks of XEROX CORPORATION.
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For information on the advanced solutions and services that Xerox can provide,
call 1-800-ASK-XEROX, ext.FSHC or visit www.xerox.com/healthinsurance today.
Using DigiPath, generic or static sections of the
HIP Health Plan of Florida book are stored on
the production printing equipment. A table
of contents is logically put together and
customized to the customer’s policy. DigiPath
resolves all formatting challenges and uses
variable merge to marry the customized
information with generic content stored in the
Digital Library.
“By doing all this electronically, instead of by
hand, we’ve raised the level of quality and
accuracy considerably,” Reinstein said. “The
real creativity that enabled our success was
the connectivity we established with the
mainframe, network and Internet so no matter
where a document is or how it is created, we
can easily access it.”
The Results
Today, the Xerox solution allows Health
Insurance Plan Administrators to produce up
to 5 million impressions per month. The
individual cost of booklets has dropped from
$5.75 to $3.55 for 38% savings. And, in a
stunning change, turnaround time has gone from
the traditional two to three weeks to 72 hours.
“The savings is in what you don’t throw away,”
said David Abernethy, executive director of
Health Insurance Plan Administrators.
“Because document changes are digital,
updates are a snap and we don’t have a lot of
unused inventory sitting on the shelf.”
In another dramatic example, an annual report
that once cost HIP Health Plan of Florida
$30,000 to produce outside the company now
costs only $3,500 through Health Insurance
Plan Administrators.
And the surprises keep on coming. In a
process that once took seven days—billing
printed on three-part paper, which had to be
burst, separated and inserted—is now handled
in as little as one day for a savings of $45,000
a year.
Enables faster turnaround
and increased accuracy.
Having started with digitally enabled enrollment
booklets, Health Insurance Plan
Administrators is now providing 98% of the
fulfillment documentation for HIP Health Plan
of Florida. This involves every kind of document,
including marketing sales kits, internal training
manuals, three- and four-part forms, overhead
presentations and annual reports.
Meanwhile, the Digital Library enables all
fulfillment documents to be updated at any
time so policyholders receive the latest
information. Improved timeliness and the
elimination of errors that occurred when
materials were manually collated have resulted
in greater customer satisfaction.
“One of the most unexpected benefits from the
Xerox solution occurred when policyholders
started paying their bills earlier than usual
because they were receiving their bills sooner,”
Abernethy said. “As a result, HIP Health Plan of
Florida got a $1.4 million cash bump that
accrued an extra 10 to 14 days interest.”
Abernethy also noted that his group is
constantly searching for new projects and
more ways to take advantage of the total Xerox
solution. “What started as a solution for a very
specific need has evolved to help our business
in ways we never anticipated,” he said.