In 2005, Podiatry Insurance Company of America (PICA), the leading provider of professional liability insurance for podiatric physicians in the US, undertook a major effort to streamline its forms processing system. The two technology pillars of its plan were the Trinisys and Hylands OnBase for document management.
PICA installed the OnBase imaging system first. They found that, though searching for document images in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system was
much more efficient than pulling paper files from cabinets, imaging alone did not improve the data entry process. In many instances, business processing from images was more cumbersome than working from paper. PICA needed a way to streamline data capture and automate the associated manual procedures.
Processing applications, renewals, and claims required many steps all manual.
- Data entry into the line-of-business application
- Generating correspondence
- Updating the marketing database
Renewals: From 20 minutes to 2 minutes using Trinisys Connect Solutions
Policy renewals processing was the first thing Trinisys helped PICA transform. Each policy has to be renewed annually, and entering the data from the renewal questionnaire took 20 minutes per insured. Because there are seasonal surges in renewal volume, trained policy owner services personnel had to work overtime during busy seasons.
The Convergence platform interface let PICA capture data from scanned or faxed renewal forms, and then passed that data, which automatically updates the line-of-business application (Oasis).
This change has had three important benefits:
- Eliminating manual entry into Oasis reduced the time to enter a renewal questionnaire from 20 minutes to 2 minutes.
- Renewal processing is much more consistent now, and data integrity has been improved.
- Entering the renewals using our Connect solution is simple enough to be performed by a non-technical position, freeing up skilled employees to focus on customer service.
PICA saves 30 minutes per claim with our Connect Solution
The Claims department was one of the first areas to transition to imaging. When a claim was reported to PICA, a claims coordinator would gather information from the insured and fill out an Incident Report, which was physically moved from desk to desk. The first phase of transitioning the claims reporting process was to implement the existing process using the imaging system (OnBase). The Incident Report and associated documents were scanned and accessed electronically instead of being physically moved from user to user. This created immediate benefits, but scanning and indexing the Incident Report actually increased the total turnaround time.
In the second phase, the Incident Report was turned into an online form. This eliminated scanning and indexing, and streamlined the process of gathering the claim information from the insured. The Convergence platform eliminated two data entry steps, automated the creation of a form letter, and sent email notifications to the claims personnel assigned to the claim. This saved 30 minutes per claim
while improving the consistency of the process and the quality of the captured data.
Application entry: From 30 minutes to 5 minutes with Connect
Processing new applications required manual entry into a marketing database (GoldMine) and the line-of-business application (Oasis), the generation of an underwriting worksheet, and typically one or more calls to the applicant to clarify information on the app. The process involved complicated rules that varied depending on the issue state. Training personnel to enter applications was time-consuming and the processing, inconsistent.
PICA chose to automate the entry of new applications using our Connect solution. A non-technical worker now enters the applications. Our Connect solution inserts the data into the two line-of-business applications, generates the underwriting worksheet, and creates a list of any inconsistencies or questions that the new business team might need to address with the applicant. This frees up the new business team to focus on customer support. All applications are processed in a consistent manner because the process is now automated.