Under pressure to do more with less? – Try this Approach

Many senior managers who run claims operations are under constant pressure to improve the disability claim results, whilst at the same time budgets are trimmed year after year.

The only real way to meet such seemingly conflicting demands is through innovation.

This does not necessarily mean embarking on a big claims automation project. Very few of these projects actually deliver any return on investment, and often prove to be career limiting for the senior management.

A better approach is to embark on incremental innovation, with a number of more focused initiatives, in an agile framework.

Analytics is Key!

Analytics is a great starting place to help identify areas for improvement, providing greater understanding of the patterns and trends that lie within the data. This could include looking at detail differences in diagnoses, in recovery profiles, rehab effectiveness and more.

This initial analysis will help find where your claims management process lags behind best practice, and address those specific areas with small, tactical investment.

An end-to-end analysis of the current claims data provides very revealing information.

Armed with this greater understanding, the claims management process can be evolved to address issues and capitalize on strengths. Our innovation can be applied with targeted solutions to realize the opportunities in a short timeframe.

Pay & Close for Greater Automation

For example, the diagram below illustrates a pay-&-close process being assisted by an analytical model that recommends which claims should be handled through this process, and which should be managed conventionally.

Flow chart for automated Pay & Close

With this approach to process improvement, ideas can be tested in a short timeframe, with minimal investment. Some will work and some will not, but the process will incrementally improve and will evolve in a much reduced timescale, and will reach a level of sophistication previously unobtainable.

The Claim Lab can partner with you to facilitate this sort of innovation in your claims management process.

You will be surprised by what lies in your data!

The Claim Lab  – Email us at  info@claimlab.org