Philadelphia, PA, February 1, 1999 — A local medical health care plan, which found its own computer network in desperate need of technology care, has saved more than $25 million after turning to CoreTech Consulting Group for the cure.

Keystone Mercy Health Plan, which processes claims for more than 600,000 members in Pennsylvania, as well as New Jersey, Kentucky and Missouri, found itself with a network that appeared, at times, to be down more often than it was working. That meant workers could not process the usual workload of more than 25,000 claims a day. A backlog built steadily, and state regulators were beginning to inquire about delays in getting payments to health care providers.

"We were patching and fixing the system on almost a daily basis," said Keystone Mercy Health Plan Chief Information Officer Bill Jones. He laughingly referred to the "technology du jour" approach taken prior to his arrival last March. But the system he found in place when he joined Keystone Mercy was far from a laughing matter. "The system would routinely fail almost every day, for three to four hours at a time," Jones commented. "In the fall of 1997, the system went down, and we were out for almost two weeks straight."

Jones turned to CoreTech to analyze Keystone Mercy’s computer network, and propose a fix. But the CoreTech team, led by Kevin Watkins, quickly found that the network was hopelessly patched together and beyond simple repair. "We stopped our work and told Keystone they should take the money they had budgeted for our analysis, and spend it instead on implementing a new system," Watkins stated.

At the same time, CoreTech’s initial study paid immediate dividends. For instance, the team found unused fiber optic cable installed between two of Keystone Mercy Health Plan’s buildings. CoreTech immediately began using the cable to replace existing data circuits, eliminating nearly $50,000 in costs and providing more than 10 times the bandwidth.

Watkins and the CoreTech team, meanwhile, designed and implemented a Next Generation network, including hardware, software, and best in class operating procedures. The most important design objective was exceptional, rock-solid reliability. CoreTech wanted to design a network environment that could automatically recover from virtually any system failure almost immediately. "We took advantage of leading-edge technologies and combined them with our best-in-class processes to create a network that delivers continuous value to the business", said Watkins.

The result of CoreTech’s efforts is that the network performs better than anyone at Keystone Mercy could have imagined. "We can now virtually guarantee clients almost 100 percent uptime and that translates into real dollars…one million dollars a day," said Jones. Network downtime has been cut to less than one day a year, a far cry from the 27 days recorded in 1997.

Keystone Mercy workers have noted a dramatic improvement as well. A daily payroll report that used to take half an hour to process is now finished in seconds. The backlog of claims is steadily shrinking, and is at its lowest level in five years. And Jones notes that the system’s imaging software works so well that at first, Keystone Mercy Health Plan employees thought it was broken, because it scanned claims documents so quickly that they believed it must be missing the paperwork.

"CoreTech has made it possible for us to adopt the newer technologies we should have implemented before," stated Jones. "With a solid infrastructure in place, we can move to standardizing our desktops on Microsoft Windows 95 and Office 97, and no longer have to simply make do with what our network will handle."

About Keystone Mercy Health Plan
Keystone Mercy Health Plan helps nearly 240,000 people in the five-county region of Southeastern Pennsylvania access quality health care services. Formed in 1996, Keystone Mercy Health Plan is the largest managed care provider for Medical Assistance recipients in Pennsylvania and the largest multi-state Medicaid managed care provider in the nation, with nearly 600,000 members in five states. More information may be obtained from www.KMHP.com.

About CoreTech Consulting Group
CoreTech Consulting Group is an Information Technology consulting firm that partners with clients to favorably manage the impact of new technologies throughout their organization. Solutions developed by CoreTech help companies reduce the risk, minimize the negative effects and ultimately provide greater business value by assisting their clients in understanding and managing the broad implications new technology may have on their organization, processes and people. CoreTech has regional offices located around the United States, including Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Atlanta. More information about CoreTech may be obtained from www.CoreTech.com, or by calling 800-220-3337.