January 23, 2009 Security Health Plan Selects ikaProHEDIS+ for Comprehensive Quality Monitoring and Communication

ikaSystems’ Innovative Web-Based Solution Will Heighten Collaboration Between the Health Plan and Its Providers and Members in the Quality Improvement Process

Security Health Plan of Wisconsin, Inc., a physician-directed health maintenance organization (HMO) sponsored by Marshfield Clinic, has entered into a multi-year agreement with ikaSystems, a provider of enterprise-level Web-based technologies for healthcare payer organizations. Security will implement the company’s ikaProHEDIS+ as the foundation of a cohesive, comprehensive quality monitoring and communication initiative, allowing the HMO to enhance healthcare quality for its members while containing costs and fully supporting providers in their quest for easier access to more current, meaningful quality information.

Security Health Plan serves more than 170,000 people in a 32-county area in northern, western and central Wisconsin. Security Health Plan has been named the nation’s 19th best commercial health plan and the 5th best Medicare plan, according to U.S. News & World Report/NCQA America’s Best Health Plans¹ 2008-09. The plan is renowned for its high level of customer satisfaction and customer retention, which is largely due to a focus on keeping members healthy through the support of preventive health services, chronic disease management programs and other initiatives.

“The excellence of our programs depends on the quality of our provider network, and our continued growth depends on our ability to share tangible results with our employer groups,” said Jane Wolf, Security Health Plan health services director.

“In ikaProHEDIS+, we have found a comprehensive quality improvement solution that speeds the flow of essential, near real-time quality information to providers and members to improve program outcomes while allowing us to better quantify the impact of that information flow and our commitment to quality for our employer group customers. We feel this will give us a significant competitive advantage in a challenging market,” said Russ Kuzel, M.D., Security Health Plan chief medical officer.

ikaProHEDIS+ is a patent-pending Web-based application that combines analytic and workflow tools to enable proactive quality management. Health plans can analyze their quality status at any time for HEDIS® or other quality programs, with easy-to-run standard and ad hoc reports that draw on real-time or near-real-time data. Providers, care managers and members, in turn, gain access to current — not retrospective — information, allowing them to take action to improve patient care and collaborate more easily.

Providers regularly receive information, such as claims, laboratory results and clinical outcomes, that highlights individual patients who are not receiving required care, allowing them to actively pursue patients for routine preventive screenings, testing and chronic care monitoring. In addition, providers, care managers and patients can receive notification when a threshold for a clinical measure is exceeded or another gap in care exists through multiple HIPAA-compliant communication channels — a secure Web site, phone, fax and email. Repeated automated attempts are made to contact physicians and patients, and eventually a fax report is sent to physicians, increasing accountability.

According to Ravi Ika, president of ikaSystems, “The greatest challenge that health plans face with their quality improvement programs is not accurately measuring the quality of services across their provider networks. The real difficulty is finding a fast and efficient way to get current information about quality improvement opportunities into the right hands in the right way so change can occur and performance can improve. By connecting information with people in a fluid communication cycle, ikaProHEDIS+ delivers exceptional quality improvement and cost containment results.”

ikaProHEDIS+ is a component of ikaMM, ikaSystems’ suite of integrated medical management solutions that blend insight and workflow collaboration into a single, comprehensive and highly intelligent system to support and enhance all care management processes and programs: utilization, case and disease management, provider profiling and pay-for-performance (P4P), and quality monitoring and reporting. All ikaMM modules run off a single comprehensive database for claims, laboratory, pharmacy, encounter data, practice management and electronic medical records information that supports standard and ad hoc report generation, with drill-down and drill-up access to normalized and analyzed data in a Web-based environment.

About Security Health Plan
Security Health Plan of Wisconsin, Inc. is a physician-sponsored health maintenance organization, sponsored by Marshfield Clinic, and serves more than 170,000 members in a 32-county service area of Wisconsin. Security Health Plan is the third largest health maintenance organization in Wisconsin and provides insured and self-funded plans to a variety of large and small employers, as well as to individuals and families. The Plan’s broad provider network of 4,100 providers, 43 hospitals and 55,000 pharmacies provides quality care at the best overall value. Through member-focused programs such as disease management, case management and wellness, Security Health Plan continually demonstrates a commitment to improving members’ health. Security Health Plan has been named to the U.S. News & World Report/NCQA America's Best Health Plans1 ranking for four consecutive years and is accredited by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). To learn more visit www.securityhealth.org.

About ikaSystems Corp.
ikaSystems is healthcare payers’ premier provider of Web-based ERP technology for process automation and intelligence management. ikaEnterprise, the company’s flagship product, automates all key processes in the payer business cycle, supporting commercial, Medicare and Medicaid lines of business. The system consists of five stand-alone, self-service Web portals for sales/broker, administrative, employer, member and provider use, each of which are tightly integrated with business intelligence and transactional systems for core claims adjudication, care management and proactive quality measurement and reporting. Using our agile, modular technology, organizations can move quickly to lower administrative and medical care expenses through greater automation and highly intelligent decision-making. To learn more, please visit www.ikasystems.com.

¹“America’s Best Health Plans” is a registered trademark of U.S. News & World Report.

HEDIS® is a registered trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).