MagnaCare Improves Security and Efficiency with Captaris RightFax
BACKGROUND
MagnaCare is a family of physician-directed, managed health care organizations offering affordable, cost-effective services
in New York and New Jersey. Its innovative programs, service offerings and extensive networks—including more than 50,000 providers—offers
exceptional value in health care without sacrificing patient care or satisfaction.
Founded in 1990, MagnaCare has grown rapidly. With 225 employees and over one million customers, it has been recognized as
the largest managed care network in the New York metropolitan area.
THE CHALLENGE
“As a paper-oriented company, faxing is a big issue for MagnaCare,” said Meir Weinraub, system administrator for the managed
healthcare provider.
Every day, he explained, employees handle hundreds of faxed customer claims, requests and other forms in addition to materials
from its network of healthcare providers. These faxes, often urgent or confidential in nature, require secure and fast handling.
Specifically, to meet privacy mandates outlined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), MagnaCare
needed tight control of its many fax machines. HIPPA guidelines, which outline national standards designed to protect personal
health information, include specific requirements for the placement and use of fax machines. For MagnaCare, ensuring this
security for standalones would have involved relocating several machines, then setting and enforcing strict access policies
and procedures across the company. Such efforts had the potential to be costly in time and expense. Along with security requirements,
MagnaCare wanted an improved method for handling its high volume of faxes. “We were managing numerous fax machines across
the enterprise,” Weinraub said, “but we still had difficulty meeting our hefty fax demand.”
The copious faxes also led to laborious methods of distribution. Often 20 or more employees shared a single fax machine. With
some of these individuals receiving dozens—even more than 100—faxes per day, it became the task of the mailroom or other employees
to spend hours just delivering the pages to their designated recipients. “Otherwise, many employees would end up wearing a
path between their desks and the fax machines,” Weinraub said.
Overall, with its commitment to patient satisfaction, MagnaCare wanted to ensure security and maintain a fast response time
in handling fax communication. “Due to our exceptional service track record and today’s high-tech methods, our customers have
come to expect quick answers,” Weinraub said. “We work to live up to these expectations as well high standards we set for
ourselves.”
THE SOLUTION
At the suggestion of Greenwich Technology Partners (GTP), a network infrastructure consulting and engineering company, Weinraub
reviewed a demonstration of Captaris RightFax, the world’s leading enterprise fax and e-document delivery solution. GTP enables
information-driven corporations to achieve business objectives by optimizing the performance of their IT infrastructures.
The firm proved a valuable partner in planning, designing and implementing RightFax within MagnaCare’s environment.
“Seeing the structure and features of RightFax, I was immediately convinced it would meet our needs,” he stated. RightFax
combines fax, email and Web technologies to provide a one-stop solution. By enabling the electronic ability to send and receive
documents from desktop, email and other business applications, RightFax allows organizations to tailor a document delivery
environment that fits specific needs.
More than 130 MagnaCare employees now use the network fax capabilities of RightFax for everyday communication. For instance,
incoming faxes to MagnaCare employees—each with an assigned personal fax number—now appear as a message denoted by a fax icon
in their Microsoft Outlook Inbox.
“Desktop fax capabilities have been instrumental in helping us meet HIPAA guidelines,” Weinraub said. “Faxes are delivered
directly to the planned recipient’s computer which has built-in security policies, so we avoided the costly process of analyzing
and securing all the standalone fax machines.”
While the centralized process has streamlined security maintenance, it has also improved efficiency. Weinraub estimates employees
have cut the amount of time they spend managing faxes by 30 percent; an improvement stemming from several process changes
introduced by RightFax. For one, instead of waiting for hand delivery of faxes, recipients may view an urgent fax immediately
upon its transmittal. This leads to a cost savings in time and effort, not to mention paper expenses.
Delivery of faxes into the integrated system also eases management, forwarding and storage of faxes in a familiar program.
“The system builds in more tracking capabilities to the paper trail,” Weinraub said. “We can now view and save messages in
an electronic, organized manner, just like email.”
On a side note, using Captaris technology has improved access to faxes for MagnaCare’s mobile employees as well. RightFax
is designed to integrate with Captaris CallXpress, a voice mail and unified messaging solution that provides desktop and mobile
workers with centralized access and management of voice, fax and email.
With this powerful combination, employees—whether on the road for several days or just the commute home—can manage faxes via
a mobile phone, laptop or the Internet. MagnaCare employees stay in touch by listening to fax headers on their mobile phones
(via text-to-speech technology) or electronically forwarding timely faxes to a hotel fax number or other location—all without
requiring the time of a busy office assistant.
Weinraub is glad to have found communication answers in one place. “We wanted a single, dependable vendor that offers solutions
for all the pieces,” he said. “It ensures compatibility and makes the job of administration easier.” He also said the open
architecture of Captaris products has allowed MagnaCare to leverage existing IT hardware and software, especially as employees
have the capability to fax directly from a variety of business applications.
Whether employees are sending information via Microsoft Word, Excel or other programs, they simply enter the recipient’s fax
number on the RightFax management screen and send the document directly from their computers.
RESULTS
Installing RightFax has impacted the way MagnaCare employees handle messages. “In fact,” Weinraub commented, “More employees
are using email—an increase of approximately 35 percent.” While some of these employees did not use email before, he explained,
once they were set up to email for RightFax integration “They found they enjoyed the increased functionality offered by both
technologies.”
“RightFax has cut down the amount of labor involved in securing, accessing and managing faxes,” Weinraub said. “It has proven
itself to be an extremely useful tool for improving our communication with customers.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Captaris is a leading provider of business information delivery solutions that integrate and automate the flow of messages,
data and documents. Captaris produces a suite of proven products and services, in partnership with leading enterprise software
companies, delivered through a global distribution network. Captaris has over 100,000 systems installed worldwide, with more
than 90 of the Fortune 100 using the company's award-winning products and services to reduce costs and increase the performance
of critical business information investments. For more information please contact us at: www.Captaris.com or 1.888.320.7778. Outside of the U.S. please call +1.520.320.7000.
ABOUT GREENWICH TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS
Greenwich Technology Partners (GTP) enables Global 2000 financial services, insurance, pharmaceutical, energy, manufacturing,
telecommunications, and other information-driven corporations to achieve their business objectives by optimizing the performance
of their IT infrastructures. GTP provides a unique combination of objective business analysis, project management, and technical
expertise to address clients’ strategic needs. GTP applies best practice consulting skills to a broad range of technologies
including systems and storage, internetworking, application and network performance management, security, and voice/data convergence.
GTP was ranked ninth on the 2002 Inc 500 list of America's fastest growing private businesses. For additional information
visit http://www.greenwichtech.com.
|
