Prosperity Health has awarded Sybase South Africa a contract to revamp its core healthcare applications for deployment over the Internet. The new system allows Prosperity's employees to securely access the firm's core applications through an enterprise portal wherever there is an Internet connection.
The custom-developed Prosperity Health system, called HITS, is an integrated package that spans every aspect of the fund administrator's business - from financials, claims and client services through to business intelligence, membership, and managed healthcare.
The implementation of the new system involved the migration of Prosperity's custom-developed applications from Sybase PowerBuilder versions 4 and 5 over to Version 7 of the application development environment.
The new system allows Prosperity Health to manage the entire medical aid administration cycle electronically - from issuing and receiving statements through to settlement of accounts and handling customer queries.
In the short-term, members and doctors will also be able to log onto the Prosperity Web site and view statement and payment information securely. Prosperity Health is one of the SADC region's fastest growing medical aid companies. The company administers 10 corporate medical aid funds representing around 85 000 families and more than 240 000 lives.
Bertus Struwig, MD of Prosperity Health, says: "As a relatively new entrant into the medical aid market, Prosperity Health is unencumbered by legacy systems and is in a strong position to roll-out applications that give it an edge over the other administrators.
"Prosperity's administrative cost per member per month is nearly 40% less than the industry standard. This achievement can be credited in part to our use of the latest technology on the market to boost efficiency."
The new system will bring the medical aid administrator a host of benefits, including the streamlining and automation of previously paper-based processes. Struwig believes Prosperity is one of the very few medical aid administration companies in Southern Africa to run all of its core processes and applications through a single enterprise portal.
Struwig says the company opted to extend its investment in Sybase software and services because of its satisfaction with the implementation of the earlier version of HITS.
"Sybase has a strong track record with Prosperity and has shown the commitment to deliver 100% on time. We have outsourced most of the development and systems support functions for HITS to Sybase, which has freed us of the need to create and manage a large IT department of our own," says Struwig.
The migration to PowerBuilder 7 version took about three months and was a painless process, according to Struwig.
From January next year, Prosperity plans to rent the system out on an application service provider (ASP) model to other South African medical aid administrators, particularly in-house corporate schemes.
Struwig says: "We will target medical aid schemes with between 5 000 and 20 000 members who cannot afford large IT investments of their own as potential customers for HITS. We believe the system will allow them cost-effectively to lift their service levels.
"For Prosperity, the benefit of this approach is that we can drive our transaction costs down and build the critical mass we need to fund further development of our systems."
Julie Tomlinson, marketing manager at Sybase South Africa, says: "For medical aid administrators, integrated IT systems are an asset that add enormous value to the vast volumes of data that pass through their businesses.
"Adept use of technology to streamline processes in what is a very paper-intensive business pays off in the form of increased efficiencies and lower costs."
Share
Editorial contacts