What Are the Key Cost Savings I Can Expect from CDI or MDM Software?

The business drivers for creating a single customer or patient view with CDI, MDM or EMPI software can be categorized two ways – creating upside and avoiding downside.

Creating upside

• Increase revenue and profit
• Improve customer experience
• Enhance business agility

Avoiding downside

• Reduce costs
• Improve risk management
• Improve regulatory compliance

Initiate’s customers have been avoiding downside, reducing costs in a variety of ways, including:

Extremely fast and accurate real-time searching

Delphi Group reports that business professionals spend 25 percent of their time - every day - simply searching for information. Initiate’s’ powerful searching and linking capabilities enable customers to identify current, historic and complex customer relationships in real time. As an example, one Initiate customer is achieving average search times of less than 100 milliseconds against a population of 80 million records.

Reduced marketing and mailing costs

One of the top-ten credit card issuers in the United States serving 20 million people found that approximately 23 percent of customers also shared an address with another of their customers, resulting in costly duplicate mailings. Initiate software reduces marketing and sales costs by identifying duplicates and reducing duplication rates. As a result, mailing costs are decreased, as is the likelihood that telemarketers will make multiple calls to the same prospect. Larger companies spend millions of dollars sending out their customer data to third-party data providers to support their data enhancement activities. Initiate provides a real-time mechanism for integrating customer data in a continuous and accurate way.

Extended life of legacy systems

An Initiate MDM, CDI or EMPI solution enables customers to take advantage of existing systems, extending the life of legacy systems and allowing for orderly and efficient migration to new systems when the time is right.

Reduced HIM and data stewardship costs

The primary risk associated with duplicate records is the poor quality of patient care. When a patient’s complete clinical history is unavailable, the quality of care can be compromised, with potentially life-threatening or litigious results. One hospital estimated that the cost per duplicate was $4,500 (including physician time, OR staff time, OR booking, correction of the duplicate patient records, risk management involvement and patient dissatisfaction).

Improved first-pass auto-adjudication rates

Members expect simplified interactions and top-notch customer service, along with online access to their records and an easy way to track claims and payments. To meet these goals and control costs, insurance providers are focusing on automating the expensive adjudication process. Multiple, fragmented member and provider records can greatly impair the auto-adjudication process, increasing costs while frustrating members. An EMPI solution can help insurance providers by better identifying members and providers and accurately matching their records and claims in real time. One customer reported that for every additional 1 percent they matched on first pass, they saved $400,000.

Reduced fraud

A top-ten credit card issuer in the United States found that despite anti-fraud business rules designed to prevent customers from having more than four cards under their brand umbrella, some customers had as many as six. Initiate’s algorithms can find customers who may have purposely transposed digits or slightly changed their information to avoid fraud detection. This also applies to watch lists, gaming lists and more.

Improved quality of patient care

Several of Initiate’s healthcare customers have improved cost effectiveness by eliminating redundant tests and streamlining billing processes. Initiate’s EMPI solution allows healthcare providers to better identify patients treated at multiple locations and increase physician access to medical records and lab results across facilities. Patients, employers, providers and insurance companies benefit by reducing duplicate tests and treatments and lowering the risks associated with missed information.

Avoiding fines

Companies can use Initiate software to manage privacy preferences of customers, applicants and prospects, including opt-in/opt-out and do-not-call information. This enhances customer satisfaction while improving compliance and avoiding fines that can run hundreds of thousands of dollars. For example, calls to a person whose name appears on a "do not call" list may result in significant fines as high as $22,000 per infraction.

Avoiding third-party fees

By reducing duplicates and accurately identifying their customers, companies can reduce third-party fees and market directly to their customers. For example, in the travel and hospitality industry, loyal customers can book reservations directly on the company’s own site allowing hospitality and travel companies to reduce fees paid to third-party travel sites which can exceed $20 per transaction.

 Return to the questions you must consider when evaluating a master data management or CDI solution.