Blue Shield of California and SASH Communications Debut Internet-based Health Insurance Sales; First in the country: Health Insurance Sales over the Internet now a reality.SAN FRANCISCO--(BW HealthWire)--Aug. 3, 1998--Blue Shield of California, one of the nation's leading health plans, and SASH Communications Inc., a Silicon Valley-based firm specializing in on-line sales for health insurance, have introduced the first-ever Internet-based, paperless sales process for health insurance. Blue Shield's IFP (1) (Intelligent Forms Processing) Using advanced techniques to scan documents and determine their data content. See ICR. (2) (Integer Factorization Problem) The difficulty of finding prime numbers in an encryption key. Online Sales is built upon SASH Communications' Managed Care Extranet(tm) software, the E-commerce platform for the health insurance industry. Blue Shield of California Blue Shield of California is a not-for-profit health insurance provider headquartered in San Francisco, California. An independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Blue Shield of California is an incorporated, wholly owned subsidiary of California Physicians' can now approve applications in minutes, cutting the approval/processing time by up to 95%. In keeping with Blue Shield Blue Shield A US not-for-profit health care insurer that is a reimbursement intermediary for physicians. Cf Blue Cross. of California's focus to serve California consumers, Blue Shield and SASH deliver to brokers and consumers state-of-the-art access to affordable, high quality health care, and significantly decrease the amount of paperwork and time it takes to process an application. "With SASH Communications we're moving in Internet time," said Blue Shield of California's Director of Strategic Informatics, Charles Kennedy, M.D. "In less than six months from the time we joined forces with SASH Communications, our brokers started selling health plans over the Internet. This system allows Blue Shield of California the best of all worlds -- reduced processing costs, better service to our broker-based distribution channel, and improved service to consumers." Consumers and brokers benefit highly. According to broker Bob Heckley, "Most customers want a decision ASAP (chat) asap - As soon as possible. even if they request a future effective date. Online applications give us the opportunity to serve our customers in the quickest way possible. This is very important to them." In the first week, Blue Shield immediately Internet-approved a half-dozen of our health insurance applications," said broker Stephen Chang. "IFP Online makes Blue Shield the easiest plan to work with." "In this rapidly emerging digital economy, we're thrilled to partner with Blue Shield of California," said Vip Patel, chief executive officer, SASH Communications, Inc. "Blue Shield's executives are thought leaders and bureaucracy breakers. For example, while others just talk about security, Blue Shield of California adopted security technology built by the U.S. Department of Defense that is exponentially more secure and confidential than today's mailed or faxed paper process. The combination of digital encryption, authentication, digital certificates, password access control, firewalls and physical data security assures that all personal information remains confidential and safe."" SASH Communications' Managed Care Extranet(tm) software platform for E-commerce, enables Blue Shield of California to easily handle its 20,000 brokers simultaneously and achieve HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996, Public Law 104-191) Also known as the "Kennedy-Kassebaum Act," this U.S. law protects employees' health insurance coverage when they change or lose their jobs (Title I) and provides standards for patient health, (health insurance portability and accountability act The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1996. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) website, Title I of HIPAA protects health insurance coverage for workers and their families when ) mandated EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) The electronic communication of business transactions, such as orders, confirmations and invoices, between organizations. Third parties provide EDI services that enable organizations with different equipment to connect. (electronic data interchange See EDI. (application, communications) electronic data interchange - (EDI) The exchange of standardised document forms between computer systems for business use. EDI is part of electronic commerce. ) transactions over the Internet. Leading the wave of E-commerce in the $300 billion+ health insurance industry, SASH Communications empowers managed care companies to increase market share through sales via brokers and directly to purchasers over the Internet. SASH Communications' software and services also create dramatic administrative cost savings by linking everyone in the front office and back office of the insurance sales workflow in one continuous, virtually paperless process from any computer, anywhere. SASH Communications is a privately held Delaware Corporation with headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. Blue Shield of California is the not-for-profit health plan that offers easy access to a choice of quality health care plans. Blue Shield is also one of the state's leading health care companies, serving more than 2 million members, with a variety of healthcare plans and generating more than $2 billion in annual revenues. The San Francisco-based organization operates Access+ HMO HMO health maintenance organization. HMO n. A corporation that is financed by insurance premiums and has member physicians and professional staff who provide curative and preventive medicine within certain financial, , California's fastest growing HMO that grew at a rate of more than 30 percent in each of the last two years. Blue Shield's PPO PPO abbr. preferred provider organization PPO Managed care Preferred provider organization, see there Infectious disease Pleuropneumonia-like organism, see there physician network is the largest in the state with over 50,000 participating physicians. The 1997 acquisition of CareAmerica Health Plans added more than 250,000 members to the above totals. Blue Shield of California recently earned a one-year accreditation by the National Committee for Quality Assurance National Committee for Quality Assurance Medical practice A private, not-for-profit organization which has become the leading accreditor of managed care plans; in site visits, NCQA reviewers evaluate a managed care plan in terms of quality management, physicians' (NCQA NCQA National Committee on Quality Assurance, see there ), under new, tougher NCQA standards for how health plans ensure quality assurance processes. The NCQA is an independent, not-for-profit organization that evaluates managed care organizations.
CONTACT: Blue Shield of California
Thomas W. Gwyn, 415/229-5110
or
SASH Communications
Vip Patel, 408/541-4180
info@sashcom.com
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