QlikView Offers Dakotacare a Cure for Information Overload
Dakotacare, South Dakota’s only statewide health maintenance organization (HMO), has dramatically improved customer service, streamlined communication with care providers, improved claims processing, and enhanced self-auditing capabilities. The key to these improvements is QlikView, an innovative business analysis tool from QlikTech, the world’s fastest-growing business intelligence software company.
In comparing QlikView against “traditional” OLAP-based Business Intelligence solutions, Mark Tracy, director of information technology at Dakotacare, found QlikView to be the most cost-effective solution, the easiest to deploy and fastest to learn. “My biggest hurdle in selecting QlikView was skepticism based on the price point; I couldn’t believe it would do what it said, at the price that it was,” he said. The free download from the QlikTech Web site convinced Tracy, and he in turn, convinced Dakotacare’s management team.
Dakotacare relies on several enterprise databases and ERP systems to manage information from care providers, suppliers, clinics, hospitals and patients. The HMO’s legacy databases were challenging to manage and individuals within the Dakotacare organization found it difficult to access the information they needed to do their jobs efficiently. A year ago Tracy implemented QlikView on a dual-core X64 Xeon-based server, giving the HMO new abilities to aggregate, analyze and audit data. QlikView not only provides real-time access for the organization, but allows its employees to instantly put information in the hands of its constituencies as well. DAKOTACARE employees now have the information they need at their fingertips.
“QlikView opened up new opportunities for us. Its phenomenal response time means that we can investigate time-sensitive issues accurately and quickly. In our case, instant access to data means sorting through hundreds of millions of records daily. QlikView’s 64-bit multi-processor platform design has enables us to significantly improve our accuracy, efficiency, and overall productivity,” said Tracy. “At the end of the day, Dakotacare is about making life easier for our members, clients and health care providers, and QlikView has enabled us to meet this challenge.”
Health insurance companies process massive amounts of data. Dakotacare’s claims data set alone contains more than 140 million records with hundreds of columns of data. This data set contains every detail on every claim paid since 2001. Because of this quantity of data, inaccuracies and discrepancies in data entry were difficult to find and manage. Using QlikView, Dakotacare quickly uncovered and corrected many of these errors, which impacted claims processing, provider reimbursements and ultimately, the bottom line. QlikView allows Dakotacare to “get it right the first time, before we get checks out the door,” said Tracy.
“Health insurance companies have unique operating demands that require business analysis tools that can probe large volumes of data quickly and easily and help them solve real business problems,” said Rick Pitts, CEO of QlikTech U.S. ”In an increasingly on-demand marketplace, leading HMOs like Dakotacare are using QlikView to leverage vital data across its organization and respond quickly to its constituents’ needs.”
QlikTech is leading a new class of easy-to-use, fast and flexible business analysis solutions that empower individuals to improve corporate performance and drive innovation. QlikTech’s flagship product, QlikView 7.2, extends the company’s vision of simplifying business analysis, offering solutions that can be deployed in days, where users can be trained in minutes, and where end users have the freedom to be more creative in their analyses.
About Dakotacare
Formed in 1985, Dakotacare is South Dakota’s largest and only statewide health maintenance organization, serving over 110,000 members. In addition to South Dakota, Dakotacare and its subsidiaries’ service areas include: Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Dakotacare has 130 employees in Sioux Falls and at its Webster, SD claims processing center.