Bright Bridges eBiz and Ops

During her five years as vice president of e-commerce at Independence Blue Cross (IBC, Philadelphia; $9.7 billion gross 2004 premium), Yvette Bright focused on front-end, provider and customer-focused technology. With her promotion to senior vice president of e-business and operations, Bright says she will leverage gains on the front end, marrying portal capabilities with back-office-type functions.

Now that e-business and operations are a combined organization, according to Bright, its goal is to "bring the back end of our claims adjudication process further up front so that we can give providers a response back on all the claims they submit to us, whether electronically or on paper, and in a more real-time fashion." The result, she adds, will be "a more transparent view for providers in terms of what's happening to their claim as it's submitted through the process."

As a measure of the success of e-business initiatives during the last five years, Bright notes that IBC has reached the mark of 2.9 million electronic transactions per month. She anticipates further success through union of operations and e-commerce which will help the insurer provide tools with greater functionality, such as product configuration and open-enrollment tools for group insurance customers, as well as e-billing and e-reconciliation in real time for providers and members.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio