PHOENIX, Ariz., REDMOND, Wash., and HOUSTON, March 21, 2000 — QCSI, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) and Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE
“CPQ” ) today announced that QCSI’s QMACS® , an award-winning health-care payer software solution, has demonstrated unprecedented scalability and performance in the largest published benchmark of its kind in health care. QMACS runs in an n-tier architecture with the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 operating system and Microsoft SQL Server TM 7.0, and Compaq’s ProLiant hardware, including the new eight-way ProLiant servers.
The independently audited benchmark tests were performed in February at Compaq’s Validation Center in Houston and were completed as a joint effort by the three companies along with Synertech, a premier application services provider (ASP) to the managed care industry, and Avnet Inc., a leading technology solutions integrator.
The
“proof of concept”
tests were conducted to confirm that QMACS running on Windows 2000, SQL Server 7.0 and Compaq ProLiant servers could support the growth and complex processing requirements of large commercial health-care insurance plans. Results confirmed that the requirements for scalability and performance can be easily met and that QMACS is a significantly more cost-effective, flexible solution than traditional solutions available to the health insurance industry. Test results also support that the average processing cost per claim will be reduced significantly and that the time needed to process large claim volumes will be hours instead of days, providing critical business benefits to health insurance companies.
“This benchmark accurately represents a typical commercial health plan,”
said Georgiana Fujita, CIO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Hawaii.
“As a result, I’m confident that QMACS would run our membership levels but would scale for even larger plans.”
The tests used data from a large health insurance plan and combined information from the plan’s commercial health maintenance organization (HMO) and Medicaid lines of business. First Consulting Group and ARC Consulting Group Ltd., leading consulting firms in the health-care technology market, independently audited the benchmark.
“During our independent analysis of this benchmark, we reviewed the processes and databases to ensure that the study was performed in a manner that reflects real-life and real-time payer and managed care organization (MCO) activities,”
said Mark R. Anderson, CEO of ARC Consulting Group and former vice president and worldwide head of the health-care division of META Group Inc.
“We concluded that the benchmarking data was valid and consisted of real membership data and that the claims and payment data meet all validity tests. In every category, this benchmark surpassed industry norms. I believe that QMACS running on Windows 2000, SQL Server 7.0 and Compaq ProLiant hardware is certified to handle the needs of large-scale managed care payer organizations. QMACS, running with three servers, has proved to be scalable from 100,000 covered lives to more than 9 million covered lives, with a user base of between 10 and 4,000 concurrent users. In most situations, QMACS with corresponding hardware configuration should enable payer organizations to reduce daily processing times by a minimum of 18 percent.”
The primary design criteria for the tests were data volume and complexity and included the following:
-
9 million members
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16.5 million claims consisting of 2,658,192 UB92 (universal billing forms) and 13,841,808 HCFA 1500s (health-care finance administration claims forms)
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More than 25,000 employer groups
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More than 1,000 unique benefit packages containing approximately 20,000 individual benefit terms
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More than 62,000 providers
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More than 1,000 unique contracts containing approximately 16,000 individual contract terms
Test highlights include these:
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In one hour, the n-tier QMACS enterprise architecture processed 3,763,092 health-care transactions representing all the major functionality of the QMACS application suite.
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The total cost per transaction was $0.0001154597. The transaction cost was calculated based on the transaction licensing for the Compaq hardware configuration, Windows 2000 and SQL Server licenses and QMACS processing 3,763,092 transactions from 9,000,000 members.
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QMACS claims adjudication processed 33,784 multiline claims per hour running as a standalone process and 23,863 multiline claims per hour with a load of 4,000 active users while maintaining subsecond query response from Microsoft SQL Server, 71 percent of the no-load performance.
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QMACS premium billing processed 3 million members with three months reconciliation in 2.25 hours. Under a 4,000-client user load, the number of members billed represented 54 percent of the no-load performance while maintaining subsecond query response.
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QMACS capitation processed 777,963 capitation detail voucher records per hour running as standalone process and 630,480 with 4,000 active users, representing 81 percent of the no-load performance.
The complete set of test results can be found at the following Web sites:
“This benchmark emulated a true-to-life production-scale environment with all the complexities of multiple benefit plans, distinctive product lines, complex provider contracts and members with varying family relationships,”
said Gregory S. Anderson, president and CEO of QCSI.
“Our confidence in the superior capabilities of QMACS running on Microsoft Windows 2000 and SQL Server 7.0 with Compaq ProLiant hardware has been validated for large-scale health insurance plans serving millions of members. QMACS provides product functionality, scalability, performance and affordability.”
”
Microsoft’s goal with Windows 2000 and SQL Server 7.0 is
to provide a robust, scalable, reliable and cost-effective architecture for health insurance organizations to improve financial efficiencies in the enterprise,”
said Susan Ralston, health-care industry manager at Microsoft.
“This benchmark demonstrated that QMACS is a powerful enterprise solution that offers both performance for high-end transaction processing and the value of cost effectiveness and scalability to grow with organizations as they increase covered lives.”
“By partnering and working with leaders in their respective areas of expertise, Compaq is continuing to provide complete, scalable and optimized solutions while reducing deployment risks for health-care institutions,”
said David Parsons, vice president of North America Industry Solutions at Compaq.
“The ‘proof of concept’ performed in Compaq’s Solutions Validation Center demonstrated that health-care institutions can dramatically change the way claims are processed while saving significant time and money – a perfect example of how we are bringing technology solutions to improve our customers’ business.”
“The success of these validation tests is of tremendous importance to Synertech and our multimillion-member customer base,”
said Steve Rock, president and CEO of Synertech.
“As a high-volume service provider, scalability, response time, robustness and reliability are critical to our operations – impacting our ability not only to meet service-level agreements, but to offer our customers affordable solutions. The test results reinforce what we already knew – QMACS is the best choice for both Synertech and its customers.”
About QMACS
QMACS is an award-winning comprehensive payor solution developed by QCSI specifically for the medical marketplace, which provides member administration, provider and contract administration, authorization and medical management, call management and customer service, claims and encounter processing, benefit plan administration, reporting and financial management, and employer and policy administration. QMACS is a client/server, n-tier-based product that utilizes Windows 2000, the SQL Server platform and Microsoft Transaction Server.
About QCSI
Founded in 1991, QCSI ( http://www.qmacs.com/ ) provides health-care information solutions that enable all health-care constituents to access and process transactions quickly, securely and at lower cost. QCSI’s solutions include state-of-the-art software products and outsourced information management for the health- and dental-care industry. The company is based in Phoenix with clients that include indemnity, managed dental care, commercial HMO, Medicare and Medicaid administration, and provider organizations nationwide.
About Compaq
Compaq Computer Corp., a Fortune Global 100 company, is the largest supplier of computing systems in the world. Compaq designs, develops, manufactures and markets hardware, software, solutions, and services, including industry-leading enterprise computing solutions, fault-tolerant business-critical solutions, and communications products, commercial desktop and portable products, and consumer PCs for the NonStop TM Internet world.
Compaq products and services are sold in more than 200 countries directly to businesses, through a network of authorized Compaq marketing partners and directly to businesses and consumers through Compaq’s e-commerce Web site at http://www.compaq.com/ . Compaq markets its products and services primarily to customers from the business, home, government and education sectors. Customer support and information about Compaq and its products and services are available at http://www.compaq.com/ .
About Windows 2000 and Microsoft
Windows 2000 Professional and the Windows 2000 Server products lower the total cost of ownership and provide a rich digital infrastructure for organizations of all sizes. In-depth technical and deployment-planning information on Windows 2000 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ .
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.
Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
QMACS and QCSI are U.S. registered trademarks of Quality Care Solutions Inc.
Compaq, and NonStop are U.S. registered trademarks of the Compaq Corp. This release contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially include implementation of a new model of distribution; the failure of systems associated with order fulfillment; changes in product mix; inventory risks due to shifts in market demand; continued competitive factors and pricing pressures; market responses to pricing actions and promotional programs; volatility of certain equity investments; component shortages; and instability in developing countries that may affect operations. Further information on the factors that could affect Compaq’s financial results is included in its SEC filings, including the latest annual report on Form 10-K and the latest quarterly report on Form 10-Q.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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