Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC Journey to Smarter Computing - Video

To balance customer needs, government mandates, and still provide quality affordable health insurance, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) wanted to centralize access to information from among multiple systems and applications. With InfoSphere solutions from IBM, BCBSNC consolidated 14 of its member systems into a single information hub. This centralized repository provides reliable and efficient access to data at a lower cost. The key benefit to this single source of truth is a consistent experience across different channels for both members and providers.

Video Transcript

Enterprise Application Systems Analyst
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina

Blue Cross Blue Shield is a health insurance provider. We are the largest provider in North Carolina. We have been in business for about 77 years. We have 2.8 million members.

We are trying to serve our customers faster, adjudicate their claims faster. Provide them with benefits and to be able to do that at a cheaper price.

In the health insurance business some of our major obstacles are balancing the customer needs, balancing mandates that are by the Government and still being able to provide the insurance that our customer’s need, in a way that they can afford it.

We had multiple systems and applications with the same types of data. There are multiple entry points to get to that data. And so project time lines were increased. Project budgets of course were increased.

And when somebody accesses those different data points they could get a different story. So centralizing the data enables people that need to have access to that information; the ability to have that single source, the single source of truth.

One of the tipping times was when the economy turned. We realized that in order for us to be able to provide to our members and our providers in an efficient and concise and consistent and as inexpensive manner as possible we need to able to cut a set of that single source of truth.

Designing for data from my perspective really means enabling capabilities through providing data in a centralized and consistent way. Thereby providing that consistent experience for our customers in a cost efficient way.

We looked at a lot of different providers of this type of product. InfoSphere was the one that met our needs.

We had a large group of individuals from IBM that could really come in and help us to set the InfoSphere up, to educate us on how it’s used and how to build it out into the future.

Our first engagement from an InfoSphere perspective was a member demographic data, so we consolidated 14 member systems into a single area for people to access that information.

This enabled us to be able to have that centralized area with reusable and repeatable processes and capabilities to enable us to provide what the business needed in a faster way.

The key benefit to having that single source of truth is that consistent experience across all channels for both our members and our providers.

The data is there, it’s consistent, it provides that experience that is reliable and efficient for both their members and their providers. And that means efficiencies and cost savings for us.

It enables them to trust us more. They are happier. They are satisfied.

This product is extremely scalable. And we know that we can build upon it with any other initiatives that we need to do at Blue Cross. Right now it’s member data, member demographic data. Tomorrow it might be provider data. The next day it might be claims information. And it’s all built off that same platform.

Working smarter means that we have the ability to deliver our solutions in a faster and more efficient manner. And more cost effective manner.