Insurers put new products to the testimplementation.

Company: Allenbrook, Inc.
Product: Phoenix 7.0
Web site: www.allenbrook.com

Allenbrook, Inc., has released Phoenix 7.0, a product that features several enhancements focusing on more comprehensive support for commercial lines business, including workers compensation. Also included in the release are a number of new platform certifications.

Magna Carta Companies, a property/casualty commercial lines writer, has been using earlier versions of Phoenix since 1998. I think its one of the best all-around policy processing systems in the marketplace simply be-cause you are in control of how you roll out or implement a particular product, says David Lawless, senior vice president of Magna Carta.

Lawless describes Phoenix as a tool set. So you can make your life as miserable or as easy as you want it to be, he says. If you have a product line you dont want to spend a lot of time developing, youre not going to put the effort into it you would put into one of your primary product lines. With the primary product lines, you are going to collect a large amount of details, and the Phoenix system allows you to do that.

Magna Carta was part of the beta testing for the newest version. Lawless says the older version fell short in the area of workers compensation audits and the insurers ability to manage the audits. The new version gets us about 99.9 percent there, says Lawless. Workers comp [policies] are what we call audit rule policies, he says. You dont audit the policies until the policy term has expired. We dont audit them until six months after the policy period expires. Then we have to go in and say, What was the exposure at that period of time? The insurer determines the rates that were in place by the states at the time of the policy and applies a credit or a debit against that policy, according to Lawless.

With states setting the rates for workers comp, it is possible the rates could go up or down in the midst of the policy period. So if the workers comp rate went down three months into the policy period, the audit calculator has to calculate the higher rate for the first period of the policy and the new lower rate for the second period of the policyall for a policy thats already expired, says Lawless.

The ability to keep track of what rates were in effect at a particular point to audit the policy is a tremendous feature, according to Lawless. We certainly are going to get more accurate audits, and the audits will be processed and put through sooner, which always is good, he says. To the insured, its weird you are talking about a policy thats already expired, but this is good for the insured, and its good for the carrier.
The release comes on the heels of an intensive, week-long customer beta program. The process of having numerous cross-functional live customers that participated as stakeholders, that specialize in commercial property/casualty insurance lines, especially workers compensation, has raised the bar in our delivering this release, says Chuck Peck, president of Allenbrook.

He believes Phoenix is capable of adding new lines of revenue-producing business or geography faster than other products while doing so with a table-driven application vs. pricey coding alternatives. This will save significant development costs along with integrated and lower overall maintenance costs, Peck adds.
Phoenix 7.0 is the latest release of Allenbrooks policy processing, claims ad-ministration, and accounting system for property/casualty insurance carriers. It also is being offered to the life market for the first time.

Special Report: Backup Systems
New Debuts at Comdex

Long-term data storage is an important consideration, but how can insurers protect themselves against loss of critical data that may be a few weeks old or may have just been created? The answer may lie in several new technologies for backup and recovery of critical data introduced during the Comdex 2003 Global Technology Marketplace held recently in Las Vegas.
CMS Products Inc. introduced its Velocity Series backup system for desktop computers. According to Costa Mesa, Calif.-based CMS, the series is the first all-in-one backup product to incorporate a Serial ATA (SATA) interface, providing users with complete backup, restore, disaster recovery capabilities and an externally bootable backup system. SATA is a technology that increases the data transfer rate between points in a computing system.

The Velocity Series is capable of clocking transfer rates of up to 1.5Gb per second, which is over three times faster than backup systems using [other technologies], the company claims. Because it is an externally bootable system, it can respond instantly after a hard drive or operating system failure. The company is offering an optional SATA controller card to make the technology compatible for machines that dont support the SATA interface.

CMS says the Velocity Series allows users to go back in time to access older versions of data from any point in time that a backup was performed. The ability to access older versions of files is valuable in maintaining an accurate history of documents, which endure ongoing revisions, the company explains.
Using a synchronization component, users can move between multiple computers and update files, regardless of which computer generated the files, says CMS. The software automatically scans both the host computers hard drive and the Velocity Series drive for new or changed files and updates the out-of-date versions by synchronizing them with the up-to-date versions.

A QuickRestore module allows users to recover data lost through a hard drive failure or accidental deletion by clicking on the restore button. The backup device performs a complete restoration of selected data from the most recent backup of the computers hard drive, the company notes. This feature reduces downtime and increases return on investment through the decrease in help desk or IT department involvement, adds CMS.
The Velocity Series, which began shipping in December, is available in capacities from 80GB to 200GB, with manufacturers suggested prices starting at $299, says CMS. The product is compatible with both Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems.

Further details are available at www.cmsproducts.com.
UltraBac Software showcased UltraBac Disaster Recovery (UBDR) Pro, which uses snapshot disk imaging technology to back up Microsoft Windows servers and workstations. According to Bellevue, Wash.-based UltraBac, the product enables recovery of an unbootable machine in minutes.

The company says it developed the product at the request of disaster recovery users who wanted an easier, faster, and more reliable method to boot dead machines than using old DOS technology. The days of an administrator needing two hours to two days to recover a failed server are over, says Morgan Edwards, CEO and founder of UltraBac. Now, its 15 minutes or even less on a high-speed network.

After installation, UBDR Pro uses an automatic scheduler to back up snapshot images of selected data to tape, disk, or other storage systems, the company explains. A built-in locked file backup agent ensures all files are backed up. The backup image file is compressed before being transferred to a network storage location, reducing network traffic and saving storage space.

If the server or workstation protected by the product fails, it can be restored in a matter of minutesat a rate of up to 800MB per minute on some high-speed networks, says UltraBac. To recover the failed machine, users boot from a universal UBDR Pro CD, then initiate a restore of the image from the storage location.

After the restore, a reboot recovers the machine 100 percent to its last pre-backup state, the company asserts. Users also may invoke the built-in encryption feature to complete secure backup media for online or offline storage security requirements.
Pricing for the stand-alone version of UBDR Pro is $695 per server, with discounts offered on multiple license purchases, the company says.

Further information is available at www.ultrabac.com.
Lost CD- or DVD-based text data or imagessuch as PowerPoint presentations, essential documents, or claims-related photosnow may be recoverable with CD/DVD Diagnostic, a software product from Arrowkey, Inc., Lincolnshire, Ill.
According to Arrowkey, the product can retrieve unreadable Windows files from uncooperative disks with a bit of automated detective work then copy the rescued material to the users hard drivewithout the need for additional hardware.

Paul Crowley, chairman of Arrowkey, said in an interview with National Underwriter, sister publication of Tech Decisions, that mass production of optical-based media (CD, DVD) in recent years has caused a reduction in the quality of new media being produced. As a result, he noted, such media may be faulty right out of the package, and valuable data may be compromised.
CD/DVD Diagnostic recovers data from unreadable, scratched, or corrupt media, including CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-R, and DVD-RW formats. It also can be used with disks created on Macintosh and Linux systems, Arrowkey says. The product searches for and reconstructs damaged files and directories, regardless of the software that originally was used to record the files.

Arrowkey says the program scans any optical disk, displays a list of all files discovered, and allows users to preview the contents before copying all or part of them to the hard drive or external media. It also features readability testing of the entire disk to gauge the extent of the damage, allowing users to determine whether or not recovery efforts will be successful as well as whether or not the disk will be reusable.

CD/DVD Diagnostic operates on any personal computer running Windows 95 through Windows XP and requires several hundred megabytes of free hard drive space to recover data from a problematic disk, says Arrowkey. It can be used with any disk drive, and it carries a suggested retail price of $49.99.
Further details and a free evaluation version of the software are available at www.arrowkey.com. Ara C.

Company: Ingenix
Product: Ingenix Third-Party Review and Investigation Services
Web site: www.ingenix.com

Auto insurance carriers can assess third-party claims faster and more efficiently through Ingenix Third-Party Review and Investigation Services (TPRI). One such carrier, OneBeacon Insurance Group of Boston, is using Ingenix TPRI to assist adjusters as they negotiate third-party auto claims.

Adjusters typically must negotiate bodily injury auto cases, otherwise known as third-party claims, without the benefit of medical or fraud-detection training. Using Ingenix TPRI, adjusters receive assistance from medical and antifraud experts to provide the adjuster with information essential for negotiating fair and accurate settlements in a timely manner.

One thing that struck me about Ingenix is it has a lot of experience in the area and has been doing some provider fraud work, says Phil Sibilia, vice president of claims at OneBeacon. Most of the bill-review vendors he is familiar with, he says, dont do a lot of third-party review. The product and the services kind of matched what we wanted to accomplish, he maintains.

OneBeacon wants to deliver to its adjusters a tool that helps them better evaluate the medical information they are presented with in bodily injury claims. [The product] looks at the bills and gives us information regarding the pricing, frequency, and duration of treatment, says Sibilia. It provides reports that help track when the treatment occurred and helps the adjuster evaluate the claim. It gives [the adjusters] a perspective on the medicals compared with other charges by other providers in the same jurisdiction. There are flags that might identify potential fraud and the need to conduct additional investigations.

Sibilia concedes sometimes there is a legitimate difference of opinion on the severity of an injury or if treatment falls outside of American Medical Association guidelines. It doesnt necessarily indicate fraud, but it is a potential flag that gives the adjuster the option to conduct some additional inquiries, says Sibilia.
Ingenix TPRI organizes and reviews third-party claims, streamlining auto insurers claims processing through expert review and findings.

Each reviewed claim is analyzed with Ingenix PowerTrak, an automated bill-review solution that adjudicates medical bills associated with the claim against state fee schedules, utilization guidelines, MDR schedules, and CES guidelines.
Nurses who understand the relationship between injuries and appropriate treatments manually review each claim.
Investigators utilize up to 500 data sources to verify the licensing status of the providers who have rendered medical services.
Adjusters are provided reports of review findings, including contact information for the nurse reviewer and other investigators assigned to the claim.

Ingenix has been a pleasure to work with, says Doreen Mancini, OneBeacon director for claims vendor management. It has stepped up to the plate to address our requirements, moving quickly and flexibly to meet our needs.