Milliman MedInsight Anticipates Health Reform Requirements, Makes Significant Strides in 2011

SEATTLE, Nov. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Milliman, Inc., one of the premier global consulting and actuarial firms, today announced that its MedInsight solution has been adopted by more than 30 new clients in 2011. MedInsight is now used by more than 75 healthcare payers, employers, government entities, third-party administrators and community health coalitions.

The MedInsight team from Milliman launched Version 7 of its popular analytic platform solution earlier in the year. With an eye toward healthcare reform, MedInsight 7 is designed to offer clients robust functionality to help turn raw healthcare data into business intelligence. Consistently recognized for its superior data integration and warehousing capabilities, MedInsight has been enhanced with a variety of new functionality that is making it easier for clients to analyze data in the new era of healthcare reform.

"This is our most significant release in the history of MedInsight," says Rich Moyer, Milliman Principal and MedInsight Product Manager. "Not only is the functionality available in MedInsight 7 highly valuable to clients, implementation timeframes are reduced by an average of 30%."

The flexibility of MedInsight 7's new architecture is significant – the firm adds more health reform-related functionality to the product each month. It plans on several minor releases throughout 2011-2012. As a Milliman product, MedInsight is being enhanced with methodologies and algorithms from some of the industry's leading healthcare minds, and the new version enables this type of dynamic release schedule.

"There are many bright minds within Milliman solving health reform challenges for clients," says Moyer. "When you add that kind of firepower to our own innovation efforts, the result is an impressive decision support and analytic solution that is especially useful for these trying times."

The new Patient Profile arms clinicians with a comprehensive overview of relevant information for each patient. Proprietary Milliman methods such as Health Cost Guidelines groupings and Chronic Conditions Hierarchical Groups provide users with powerful means of analyzing cost and utilization metrics. And accountable care organization (ACO)-related functionality, such as evidence-based quality analysis and population health management, enables clients to stay on top of their payment reform initiatives. Add to that the new pharmacy-related functionality, such as drug substitution modeling and therapeutic equivalency, and you have a powerful system designed to leverage key data assets for improved performance and patient health.

MedInsight has added many types of clients, including several organizations focused on specific health reform strategies. Catholic Medical Partners in Buffalo, New York, chose MedInsight in early 2011. "We went with MedInsight because of their experience working with both quality and financial issues within the healthcare industry," said David Nielsen, Director of Information Technology and Internal Operations. "We looked at other competing products and decided that MedInsight was the right choice for us." Catholic Medical Partners contracts with multiple health plans in its market, so both a robust and flexible reporting system was required. "Milliman MedInsight's expertise is incredibly helpful. We are changing the way we do things in a number of areas, and they are able to provide us with some great advances while helping us to continue to meet all of our contractual and compliance requirements," Nielsen added.

Milliman also unveiled a redesigned MedInsight website (www.medinsight.milliman.com) in June that promotes the full range of related products and services, along with new case studies and a short video about Version 7 of MedInsight. "Aside from a new look and feel to the site, our strategy with the redesign was to showcase our plan of continuing to stay ahead of the requirements that our clients are facing from a reform perspective," says Todd Fessler, MedInsight's Sales & Marketing Director. "The healthcare industry has relied on Milliman – and MedInsight – for many years to help them with difficult problems. Our MedInsight website is an easy place to view the options available to clients."

Milliman's MedInsight Practice has experienced steady growth since its formation in 1997. However, the influx of new clients and the release of MedInsight 7 have accelerated growth faster than expected. "We're growing in terms of both clients and staff," adds Fessler. "We believe MedInsight 7 and our individual MedInsight tools have us well positioned for a bright future."

For more information about Milliman MedInsight, go to http://www.medinsight.milliman.com.

About Milliman

Milliman is among the world's largest independent actuarial and consulting firms. Founded in Seattle in 1947 as Milliman & Robertson, the company currently has 54 offices in key locations worldwide. Milliman employs over 2,500 people. The firm has consulting practices in healthcare, employee benefits, property & casualty insurance, life insurance and financial services. Milliman serves the full spectrum of business, financial, government, union, education and nonprofit organizations. For further information, visit www.milliman.com.

SOURCE Milliman, Inc.