Customer Success Story

Health Alliance Medical Plans

Dedicated to leaving health care decisions in the hands of patients and physicians, CarleCare HMO enrolled its first HMO member in March 1980.  Changing its name to Health Alliance Medical Plans (Health Alliance) in 1989, they now provide coverage to over 250,000 members in Illinois and Iowa. 

As the largest managed care organization in downstate Illinois, Health Alliance emphasizes wellness, education, prevention and has assembled a network of the best health care professionals.  This has earned them recognition from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and the highest accreditation for their HMO, POS and Medicare HMO products.

Accounting Done Right

Before implementing Epicor, Health Alliances was entering all of their general ledger transactions manually.  This process was not only time consuming, but also left the door wide open for entry error and audit discrepancies.  It was impossible for them to generate accounting reports quickly as everything required additional manipulation with Excel®.  This meant that it took anywhere between three days to a week to get an accurate look at the accounting balances.

With Epicor Enterprise the same accounting reports are run within a matter of minutes.  Now, when the reports are run all of the information is gathered electronically bringing the error rate to zero.  This has saved countless man-hours and eliminated much of the stress associated with human error.

Epicor Enterprise integrated perfectly with their current claims program as well as providing the timeliness and flexibility Health Alliances was looking for, including the ability to grow with the company.

“We needed a solution that would streamline our processes while allowing us to run business as usual,” said Laura Barragan, general and regulatory accounting manager for Health Alliances Medical Plans. ”Epicor did everything we asked, bringing us to a new competitive level.”

Improving Business Process

Improving business processes across the board, Health Alliance now has more reliable documentation.  The accounting department spends the most time working in the system.  However, they are not the only ones who find the new Epicor functionality useful.

Using the FRx writer, managers are now able to track their own expenses based on reports that they generate.  This saves the accounting department precious time that can instead be devoted to other priority tasks.

Prior to the Epicor implementation there was no accountability for data entry.  Anyone could go into the accounting spreadsheets and make changes.  This possibility could have proven very problematic for audits.  With Epicor Enterprise information is tracked; now the preparation for an audit is less daunting and stressful because of the integrity of the system.

Operating at a Higher Level

Health Alliance now has all the functionality they need to run at a higher level of efficiency.  That efficiency allows them to compete more effectively and to grow their business more aggressively.

With the improvement in the quality of the information they’re able to access with Epicor Enterprise, Health Alliance, was able to reduce the number of man hours logged to balance the ledgers and produce reports. Real-time analysis has allowed Health Alliance to improve the quality of their accounting information, and the total cost of ownership makes everything feasible.