Payroll Outsourcing Becomes Payday For Suppliers
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Payroll becomes the central focus of human resources outsourcing. This saves trees because paper forms become a thing of the past.
Research & Insight
Function
Insurance Transactions
No Matter How You Slice It: Data Warehousing Solution
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
The plane that crashed into the Pentagon wiped out every accounting record for the entire year for one military service. Data warehousing can rebuild those records overnight.
Making Medical Claims More Accurate
Jerri L. Ledford, Business Writer
Eligibility errors are the number one reason to deny medical insurance claims. Outsourcing speeds dispute resolution.
Fewer HIPAA Headaches
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
April 2002. The impending deadline now shaping the future of privacy and security of patient information in the healthcare industry finds some organizations facing formidable challenges, for they must soon comply with the initial guidelines and standards set forth in the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The new security rules are not yet final, but healthcare organizations are turning quickly to service providers for solutions to protect the confidentiality of patient data.
Outsourcing Payroll Check Printing Pays Off
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Employees get a sinking feeling when they look at their paychecks and they’re wrong! If they believe the payroll department didn’t calculate their overtime properly or deducted too much for their health insurance, the first thing they do is reach for the telephone. Then, the payroll staff has to drop everything and reconstruct what happened to determine if they were paid the proper amount.
Outsourcing Helps Trade Center Buyers Get Back in Business
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
Outsourcing suppliers are responsive in a crisis. Forty-five minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Compaq executives were on the phone, putting together a triage of support for its eight financial clients with Recover-All contracts as well as its many other customers headquartered in the twin towers. Tom Simmons, vice president of Compaq Managed Services in Stowe, Massachusetts, says within three hours Compaq had organized a crisis center routing telephone questions to Colorado Springs and opened a walk-in facility near Madison Square Garden manned by its Northeast sales team. A crisis Web site was online that night.
HR Moves to Self-Serve
Outsourcing Center, Beth Ellyn Rosenthal, Senior Writer
SynHRgy HR Technologies, an HR outsourcing vendor in Houston, Texas, monitored the usage of its 500,000 participants last fall. Sixty-five percent of the enrollees used the Web or its interactive voice response (IVR) system in lieu of talking to a live representative, reports Kraig Koester, Midwest regional director for SynHRgy. He points out the outsourcing vendor’s 35 clients range from high tech companies who couldn’t live without their Palm Pilots to unionized heavy industry whose employees work with their hands not computers.
How to Get Ready for HIPAA
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
From the moment of his 1999 signature approving two-thirds of the proposed HIPAA regulations, President Clinton tossed the healthcare industry a hot potato. So now the industry is forced to start changing the way it was doing business.
Healthcare’s Biggest Challenge
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Behind closed doors, discussions about the biggest challenge for both providers and payers in the healthcare industry are not about HIPAA compliance. It’s about how to be profitable. Given the numerous industry problems besetting companies, revenue has been drastically cut, and most have lost millions of dollars for several years in a row. The solution, as many are discovering, is for organizations to become more efficient. And the only way to accomplish that objective is to outsource non-core business processes and take advantage of outsourcers’ expertise and technological resources.
Like a Fifth Wheel
Outsourcing Center, Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer
Striving to be competitive involves tremendous risks. The timing must be right, and the resources must be available. It’s costly, and the return on investment might be low. In fact, the entire effort might fail. And someone will be held accountable.