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HealthMed uses Numara™ FootPrints® to automate internal and external service operations, as well as a range of other request-driven projects.
The Challenge Based in Whittier, California, HealthMed Services is the managed service organization for two independent physicians' associations, including Presbyterian Health Physicians and Presbyterian Inter-Community Hospital. As a managed service organization, HealthMed provides all non-clinical "back office" management services, including billing, marketing, purchasing, and health plan contracting administration to more than 32,000 healthcare customers. Prior to selecting a web-based service desk, HealthMed outsourced its IT help desk operations. In 1999, Vince Rinner, Chief Information Officer at HealthMed, led a team to bring this strategic operation in-house in an effort to improve efficiencies and service levels. Rinner saw that service requests were falling through the cracks and he did not have an effective system to track (or access) how long it took to resolve such issues. He relied on a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet and IBM® Lotus Notes® as his tracking tools. Rinner's first step towards bringing the help desk operations in-house was to query HealthMed's IT group to understand the types of inbound service requests and processes they needed to track, manage, and control. He then surveyed employees who responded by requesting a system that would resolve their issues faster than the current outsourced process. Rinner searched for a flexible, web-based service desk solution that could effectively track and manage HealthMed's help desk operations. The Numara FootPrints Solution @ HealthMed Services HealthMed deployed Numara FootPrints on a Microsoft® Internet Information Services (IIS) web server and used the web-based system's built-in database. Rinner was very impressed with Numara FootPrints' ease of deployment, as it took an hour to configure his internal help desk. "The system's web interface made it extremely easy-to-use. Within a week, we completely customized Numara FootPrints to match our processes, and I was able to get my help desk team trained and ready for action."
Rinner's first project was HealthMed's internal help desk. Key features of Numara FootPrints that are vital to HealthMed included knowledge management, two way email management, escalation, reporting, business process tracking, and centralized workflow automation.
"With 100 employees at HealthMed and an additional 2,000 at Presbyterian Inter-Community Hospital, we receive many technical inquiries each day, all related to computer support," explains Rinner. "Having a centralized repository to track, manage, and control service issues and requests was critical to our business."
The use of Numara FootPrints continues to grow at HealthMed as they extend the system to manage and track other request-oriented projects throughout the organization, including: Member Services Call Center, System Error Reporting, and Report Request Tracking.
The Results HealthMed significantly improved its internal help desk operations and expanded the system to streamline a range of other request-oriented processes that were previously managed with paper-based forms or spreadsheets. With Numara FootPrints, HealthMed employees are much more self-sufficient in solving problems on their own. The searchable solutions knowledge base enables employees and the help desk agents to resolve issues much faster. As a result, 95% of HealthMed's calls are now solved on the first attempt. This is enabling Rinner and his team to keep pace with increased workloads. Rinner's team also increased its productivity. Because problems are addressed and resolved at a much faster rate, HealthMed is now available to re-allocate its IT resources to focus on other projects and business needs. "We started off with a few Numara FootPrints licenses and kept growing exponentially, adding more users and projects since management realized the tangible ROI of the system and how it is instrumental in keeping things running smoothly." For the full PDF version of this case study, click here.
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