Meridian Health Care Management Integrates Business Objects

Meridian Health Care Management Inc, a nationwide provider of outsourced managed care technology and administrative services for provider organizations, hospitals and health plans, covering 450,000 member lives, has integrated products from Business Objects, a leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, into its technology solution for managed care clients.

Meridian will use InfoView, BusinessObjects and WebIntelligence from Business Objects. These data reporting, analysis and distribution products will allow Meridian's clients to customize reports and queries to access information vital to proper financial management and informed business decisions.

In the past five years, 150 medical groups have gone bankrupt or closed due to financial reasons. The challenge of managing within a capitated model is a reason frequently cited for the financial instability of these physician organizations. Under this system, health plans give physician organizations, such as IPAs or integrated delivery networks, a monthly per-member fee for providing care. They also delegate to these groups the responsibility of spending the money, deciding on care, and disbursing payments to physician members. If these groups inadequately manage their resources or spend too much, they are at risk of losing money and failing.

"Better information and data analysis will help physician organizations, hospitals and health plans succeed in a number of ways," said Michael Alper, president of Meridian Health Care Management. "They will be able to obtain timely financial and utilization data to determine whether the costs of the services they provide are in sync with the revenue they receive. By analyzing this information, the physician organizations can obtain information on cost trends, patterns and abnormalities. Leadership will then be empowered with the business intelligence to directly influence the group's bottom line."

"Business Objects specializes in helping clients find and use the vital business intelligence buried in their data," said Joel Weingarten, vice president and general manager of the extranet business unit for Business Objects. "By empowering clients to access managed care information through its extranet, Meridian Health Care Management has enhanced the level of service it offers and has firmly established itself as a leader in managed care technology and consulting services."

Currently, provider organizations and hospitals have a difficult time substantiating their cost structure, directly controlling their expenses, and realizing that a larger volume of business does not necessarily result in economies of scale. By incorporating Business Objects solutions, Meridian will allow its customers to directly access the information they need to identify financial weaknesses and make sound business changes.

While many standard performance reporting templates are available, clients have specific requirements and often need customized reports. Previously, Meridian had to perform time-consuming queries and modification processes for each report requested. The resulting hardcopy report took several days to produce, and many clients still required additional access to information.

By incorporating Business Objects solutions, Meridian clients will now have a complete data warehouse available to them. They can produce their own reports with drill down capabilities to obtain the cost of care and other relevant information. No other healthcare management or software vendor has bundled such a powerful set of reporting, analysis, and information distribution tools into their products or services.

"Now regardless of a client's technical proficiency or computing environment, Business Objects reporting and analysis solutions will offer them an intuitive and user-friendly interface to access the information they need. The reports are deployed over the Internet and are easily modified by the end user. In addition, Business Objects data analysis capabilities are the best on the market. This integration illustrates Meridian's continued commitment to invest in technology and provide practical solutions to our managed care customers," said Alper.

Information access, queries, ad hoc reporting and data analysis are all tools that can contribute to turning around the performance of a borderline physician organization. Historically, these groups could not afford the information technology and analytical tools that would boost their performance, but Meridian's ASP allows these groups to affordably access state-of-the-art technology as a hosted application over the Internet.

With the increase in electronic and automated transactions, managed care organizations are collecting vast amounts of data, especially from electronic claims processing. This information must be made accessible and analyzed to improve financial performance and the quality of care. Only with the implementation of appropriate analysis tools can this information be transformed into knowledge to help organizations stay competitive and financially survive in today's managed care environment.

Business Objects solutions are currently available to Meridian's managed care customers and will be made available to their ASP clients on July 1, 2001.

About Meridian Health Care Management

Meridian Health Care Management is a nationwide provider of outsourced managed care technology and administrative services for both health care payors such as health plans and self-insured employers, and provider networks such as Independent Practice Associations (IPAs), provider sponsored organizations (PSOs), physician hospital organizations (PHOs) integrated delivery systems (IDS), and management service organizations (MSOs). Based in Woodland Hills, and with an office in Santa Maria, Calif., the company has been in business since 1982, and provides services to 13 provider organizations, hospitals, and health plans in six states. For more information about Meridian Health Care Management and its services, contact Michael Alper at Meridian Health Care Management, 818-673-1900 x203, michael.alper@mhcm.com, or visit the company at www.mhcm.com.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is a leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions. The company coined the term e-business intelligence in 1998 to describe the intersection of business intelligence and the Internet. Using e-business intelligence, organizations can access, analyze, and share information in intranet, extranet, and e-business environments. In intranets, the company's products provide employees with information to make better business decisions, and are used in environments ranging from workgroups of 20 users to enterprise deployments exceeding 20,000. In the extranet environment, the company is pioneering the use of e-BI in applications that allow organizations to build stronger relationships by linking customers, partners, and suppliers via the Internet. In addition, the company's products can improve the performance of an e-business by providing reporting and analysis against the ever-expanding amount of transaction and profile data that is collected each day throughout the World Wide Web.

Founded in 1990, Business Objects pioneered the modern business intelligence industry by inventing and patenting a "semantic layer" that insulates users from the technical complexity of database systems. Today, the company has over 13,000 customers in more than 80 countries. Business Objects can be reached at pr@businessobjects.com and www.businessobjects.com.

Contact Business Objects, Sherry Lowe, 408-953-6038, slowe@businessobjects.com.