Excellus BCBS Reports Faster Data Processing With SAS

Rochester, N.Y.-based Excellus BlueCross BlueShield says it has decreased the time it takes to process data by 70 percent after implementing Cary, N.C.-based SAS data integration technology.

"In a typical year, we deal with more than 100 million member and claims records," Joseph Randazzo, manager of actuarial services for Excellus BCBS, says in a statement. "The amount of data is too large to manage with Microsoft Office Access databases. With SAS, you can just kick off a process flow and work on something else while waiting for the results."

Excellus BCBS uses these data to forecast medical and membership trends that it needs when setting health insurance premium rates for the upcoming year.

"We were in an environment where we spent 70 to 80 percent of our time scrubbing, extracting, transforming and loading data – with less than 30 percent of time spent on analysis. With SAS, in many instances, those numbers have flip-flopped," Randazzo continues.

Excellus worked with SAS partner D-Wise to implement the platform in May, D-Wise reports.

Other health insurance plans that use SAS include Horizon BCBS of New Jersey, CareSource and Highmark.

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio