Category Archives: Insurance

How a Personal Cloud Might Streamline Our Personal Business

Jon Udell in a post today in Wired Cloudline uses a story of his son’s car accident and hospitalization, and the related auto and health insurance issues, to paint a hopeful picture of how a “Personal Cloud” might, sometime in the future, simplify and streamline the flow of documents and bills.

What’s interesting is that instead of the usual ranting about the inefficiencies of various health care providers (doctors, hospitals, rehab clinics) and insurance payers (auto and health, he acknowledges that only he can be the “router” of documents for this single event.

His business relationship with particular providers and payers, combined with the event (an accident and subsequent treatment) makes him the only party uniquely able to be the traffic cop for data flow.

One View of the customer is a laudable business mantra. But a customer often engages with many businesses in the context of what is, from the customer’s point of view, one business process. It’s a decentralized game with many players, and the only referee is the customer. Only we can create the One View that we need. Today we do it the hard way, using phone calls and faxes and piles of papers on our desks, and we do it poorly. I’m hoping our personal clouds will enable us to do it easily and well.

He’s right. There’s no magic way to take these burdens off our shoulders. But the right technology could make it lighter and more efficient.

Read his post.


Xerox, CHOICE Administrators Team to Deliver Health Insurance Exchanges for States

Xerox

Xerox has formed an alliance with CHOICE Administrators Exchange Solutions in all 50 states to offer a comprehensive, secure, cloud-based Health Insurance Exchange (HIX) solution. States can begin implementing and customizing the solution today with confidence that the HIX will be fully operational for October 2013 enrollments and for January 2014 coverage effective dates, the deadlines set by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“Our discussions with states show that the majority want to make health reform as state-specific as possible and to maintain control over their HIX rather than defaulting to the federal solution,” said Kevin Counihan, president, CHOICE Administrators Exchange Solutions. “As the certification deadline gets closer, it’s increasingly important for states to consider a comprehensive solution that doesn’t require building a product and allows time for customization. States can tailor their HIX solution developed by Xerox and CHOICE to meet the needs of their residents and small businesses and be sure their HIX is ready on time.”

CHOICE Administrators Exchange Solutions delivers the framework of the HIX Solution Suite, a software-as-a-service cloud-based platform, which allows participants to make informed enrollment decisions while providing their sponsoring employers the infrastructure to maintain affordable budgets. Xerox provides the business process and technology solutions to help states operating a HIX handle massive amounts of information quickly, efficiently and securely on behalf of millions of people.

“Xerox has more than 40 years of experience working with state governments,” said Kevin Walsh, vice president, Healthcare Eligibility and Insurance Exchange Services, Xerox. “Our expertise, knowledge of the marketplace and partnership with CHOICE positions us well to support the HIX design to increase access to health coverage for consumers.”