HCFA Approves Clementine Data Mining Software

To ensure Medicare pays correctly for medical services, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) has approved Clementine, SPSS' enterprise-strength data mining workbench, for use within its national network of Peer Review Organizations (PROs), independent healthcare experts contracted by the federal government to improve the care given to Medicare patients. The PROs will use Clementine to evaluate and ultimately reduce payment error rates. Nine PROs have purchased $1.2 million worth of Clementine software and services, with several additional PROs evaluating the software for purchase in 2001.

HCFA approved the use of Clementine within its PRO community as a part of the Payment Error Prevention Program (PEPP). The program is to reduce the occurrence of Medicare payment errors. PEPP is a directive from HCFA that came from the results of an audit of its 1996 and 1997 financial statements, which estimated Medicare made more than $4 billion in incorrect payments in each of these years for inpatient hospital services.

"SPSS has worked closely with us to develop a program option that includes customized training for participating PROs, which will help us isolate factors that lead to payment errors, for better monitoring and prevention of incorrect Medicare payments," said Raymond Frederick, HCFA project manager.

"Government agencies are under increasing pressure to deliver quality service to citizens," said Fiona McKenna, SPSS industry marketing manager. "To do so, the agencies must ensure that their funds are allocated properly. Data mining with Clementine will enable HCFA's PROs to implement projects and improve the accuracy of Medicare payments, which will ultimately help them deliver better service to beneficiaries and taxpayers."

About Clementine

Clementine, SPSS' enterprise-strength data mining workbench, helps organizations improve the service delivery through in-depth understanding of data. Organizations use the insight gained from Clementine to retain profitable customers, identify up- and cross-selling opportunities, attract new customers, detect fraud, reduce risk and improve government service delivery. Clementine can help organizations better understand their customers' and citizens' online behavior and, as a result, improve Web site design, increase e-store sales and deliver online services more effectively.

At each point of the data mining process, Clementine's visual interface invites users' specific business expertise. Clementine's many modeling techniques, such as prediction, classification, segmentation and association detection, lead to the most powerful, accurate model or combination of models, producing superior results. Once models are created, Clementine Solution Publisher enables their delivery enterprise-wide to decision makers or a database.

Clementine has established a leading position in the data mining market and is used in a wide range of industries including e-commerce, telecommunications, finance, retail, health care, government and higher education. More than 500 organizations worldwide use Clementine including the Department of Defense's Defense Finance Accounting System, the Internal Revenue Service, British Telecommunications, Unilever, Provident Financial, Raydium and e-Dialog.

About SPSS in the Public Sector SPSS analytical solutions for the public sector enable government agencies at all levels to deliver better service to citizens, and higher education institutions to better meet students' educational needs and improve the quality of life for students on campus. Government agencies using SPSS analytical solutions develop a deeper understanding of citizens to improve service delivery, as well as develop better e-government initiatives. With SPSS analytical solutions, higher education institutions understand their students, better enabling them to improve recruitment, retention and matriculation.

About SPSS Inc

SPSS Inc enables organizations to develop more profitable customer relationships by providing analytical solutions that discover what customers want and predict what they will do. The company delivers analytical solutions at the intersection of customer relationship management and business intelligence. SPSS analytical solutions integrate and analyze market, customer and operational data in key vertical markets worldwide including: telecommunications, health care, banking, finance, insurance, manufacturing, retail, consumer packaged goods, market research and the public sector.

Headquartered in Chicago, SPSS has more than 40 offices, over 900 employees and 1999 revenues of $142 million. The company also has won the following awards: No. 77 on Forbes 2000 list of the "200 Best Small Companies" and No. 12 on the 2000 DM Review 100; placed No. 16 on the 2000 Soft·letter 100, a ranking of the top 100 personal computer software companies in the United States; and No. 115 in the 2000 Software 500, a ranking of the world's largest software vendors by Software Magazine; listed on Working Mother magazine's "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" for 2000. For more information, visit www.spss.com.

About HCFA

The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) is the federal agency that administers Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). HCFA provides health insurance for over 74 million Americans through these programs. In addition, HCFA performs a number of quality-focused activities, including regulation of laboratory testing (CLIA), development of coverage policies, and quality-of-care improvement. HCFA maintains oversight of the survey and certification of nursing homes and continuing care providers (including home health agencies, intermediate care facilities for the mentally retarded, and hospitals), and makes available to beneficiaries, providers, researchers and State surveyors information about these activities and nursing home quality. For more information, visit www.hcfa.gov.