Unity Health increases enrollment and renewal process efficiency with ikaEnterprise system

SAUK CITY, WI - Dec. 7, 2006 - ikaSystems Corp. today announced that Unity Health Insurance of Sauk City processed 100 renewals in about 20 minutes - right after the renewal module of the Sales Portal went live on Nov. 21.

Implementation discussions for the ikaEnterprise System, which replaced manual paper-based processes at Unity, began in December 2005. The Sales, Underwriting and Admin Portals went live July 11. The Employer and Member Portals went live in October, and the Sales Portal went live in November. The self-service web portals represent the ikaEnterprise System, which is designed to streamline and automate a health plan's business processes. These include quoting and proposal generation, plan selection, application submission and medical underwriting. The health plan chose a license model, enabling it to maintain the web portals completely on its own.

For health plans, one key way to increase profitability is to streamline the plan renewal process. This process can be automated to a great degree by ikaEnterprise. The system's Sales Portal provides pre-renewal and batch renewal notifications to support the processes. It creates renewal and proposal documents and features customizable templates that are clear and easy to understand. It also generates and coordinates the distribution of renewal or policy change information, quickly informing brokers of a group's status.

According to Radovan Bursac, Vice President of Finance for Unity, brokers and internal sales representatives for the health plan previously managed renewals by manually entering data into an Excel spreadsheet and reviewing it periodically. Now, the Sales Portal calculates renewal information from a feed from Unity's database, informing the broker by automatic alerts when a group is up for renewal.

"It takes only 20 minutes, so we are saving 25 to 30 hours on that manual portion of the process," says Bursac.

"Initially, we hadn't chosen the portals because of the renewal automation," Bursac continues. "But the efficiency we have gained on the renewal side is extraordinary, and greatly exceeds our expectations when it comes to providing us with the ability to retain and bring in new business."

In addition, Unity is now seeing gains in quoting volume since the Sales Portal went live. Internal sales representatives and brokers used the Sales Portal to process quotes, and groups are now using the enrollment capabilities of the Member Portal since the portal went live in October.

"We can see that a tremendous amount of efficiency can be gained here," says Bursac.

Since the Underwriting Portal went live, underwriters no longer have to use an Excel spreadsheet to conduct the rating process. The module's rating engine now automatically configures rates for underwriters.

The paper-based system at Unity was in need of vast improvement. Unity selected ikaSystems' Sales, Underwriting, Admin, Broker, Employer and Member Portals because of their ability to bring extraordinary efficiency to the managed-care cycle.

"We are exceptionally pleased with the results, and we will continue to see improvements from it," says Bursac. "We are getting new quoting activity, and ultimately this will bring more membership."

"We are pleased with the progress Unity has seen since implementing our solution," said Ravi Ika, president and CEO of ikaSystems. "This is only the beginning."

About Unity
Unity Health is a locally owned and operated health insurer based in Sauk City, WI. As a part of UW Health, Unity provides its members with access to a comprehensive provider network that includes UW Health and regional physicians, as well as the University of Wisconsin Hospital and clinics and community hospitals located throughout the southwestern Wisconsin service area. Unity offers a variety of health insurance products and member-focused wellness and disease management programs through individual health insurance products, commercial employer-based health insurance and government plans. For more information visit www.unityhealth.com.