Aetna Chief Executive John W. Rowe, a gerontologist by training, was hired two years ago to heal one of the nation’s oldest companies. The big insurer is showing signs of recovery under his care, reporting second-quarter operating income of $91.3 million after turning its first operating profit since 2000 in
The downsizing that has forced it to scale back its technology investing isn’t unique to Cavalier Homes. The downsizing has affected the larger companies in the manufactured home-building business as wellcompanies like Clayton Homes, Palm Harbor Homes and the industry leader, Champion Enterprises. Indeed, while the overall real-estate market has
Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) processes paper claims for Aetna, scanning documents and then shipping the data along with an image of the original to an overseas processing center for quality control. Much of this work is done in Ghana, where workers compare the claims data to the image of the
Like a lot of technology companies, SAP’s stock has taken a hit. It’s fallen from $58 in July 2000 to $18 this year, a drop of 69%. The cumulative wealth of its shareholders has fallen from $63 billion at the end of 1999 to $24 billion. But, unlike a lot
Integrate (Among Other Things, to Make Sure Duplicate Payments Cease) Aetna’s customer and profit woes largely revolve around its ability to process claims fairly, efficiently and cheaply. “Reducing the labor associated with paying claims is a critical lever with regard to being profitable,” says Brad Holmes, an analyst with Forrester
Automate (It’ll Save at Least $8m a YearAnd Probably a Lot More) Key to speedier processing of claims and cutting overhead is receiving claims electronically. On average, claims cost $5 to $15 each to process manually and $1 electronically. In other words, Aetna saves at least $4 every time it
Repair Relationships (Its adversarial stance hath made Aetna sickly. Insurer, heal thyself) Automating claims processing is an overdue solution to an old problem: The need to exchange information in smart ways. Now, that information needs to be put at the fingertips of health care customers, so they once again can
As technology chief for Methodist Hospitals of Dallas, a $275-million network of medical centers in Texas, Pamela McNutt faces twin pressures of declining revenues and ever-higher expectations for medical safety. Add to that the daunting job of complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a new set
41% is the amount top companies found they could trim application development costs simply by consistently using Information Technology standards. More standards, less cost. If it’s become almost a truism over the last 10 years for CIOs trying to plan their information technology spending, then how come so many companies
Utter the words, “modeling” and “reuse” among some developers, and you’ll probably get a response not suited for tender ears. These are code words for trying to manage the often-chaotic process of developing software. Most efforts to reuse software code over the past 20 years languish in obscurity. Remember CASE,