Health Insurers Hindered By Outdated IT

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/admin-systems/232301063

By Neil Versel
InformationWeek
December 27, 2011

Many health insurers will need to upgrade their IT infrastructure in the 
next few years to meet coming mandates and respond to healthcare reform 
efforts, but cost and short timetables could be significant obstacles, a 
new survey reveals.

In a survey of 106 leaders from healthcare payers, 35% of respondents 
listed cost or return on investment as their top concern with 
implementing new, organization-wide IT systems. Nearly a quarter 
participating in the poll from HealthEdge, a Burlington, Mass.-based 
developer of management software for the health insurance industry, said 
that they were most concerned with disruption to regular business flows.

About 21% cited short deadlines to comply with mandates, such as the 
switch to ICD-10 coding by October 2013.

Only 22% said they were fully prepared to support ICD-10, with 
remediation plans in place and system upgrades underway. About 37% 
indicated that they were "somewhat prepared," but not sure that they 
would be able to meet the deadline, while 36% were just starting to 
ready themselves for ICD-10. Just over 5% have not finished evaluating 
their IT capabilities or created a remediation plan for the new coding 
system.

"This is not terribly surprising," HealthEdge executive VP Ray 
Desrochers, told InformationWeek Healthcare. "A lot of the largest 
payers got their act together early," Desrochers said, but noted that 
the tier just below the biggest insurance companies did not really start 
on ICD-10 until this year, even though federal officials set the 
deadline in January 2009.

[...]


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