Customer stories

TriWest Healthcare Alliance

TriWest Healthcare Alliance streamlines faxing for facilities across 21 states. Healthcare provider to US military members, veterans, and families streamlines operations and sees annual cost savings of $500,000 with OpenText XM Fax

Challenges

  • The need for a quick and cost-effective solution for processing healthcare services requests across a vast network
  • A secure, robust and flexible fax solution needed to handle high volume of inbound and outbound faxing

Results

  • Achieved a cost-savings of $500,000 per year

  • Increased productivity: the inbound/outbound fax load handled almost doubled from 28,000 pages to 45,000 pages per day

  • Increased coverage to 90 locations, compared to 32 locations initially

Story

TriWest had just landed an expanded contract with the DoD to manage and administer the TRICARE program throughout 90 western United States locations when the company was faced with an immediate need for a secure, HIPAA- and government-compliant enterprise fax server solution.

medical building blocks

XM Fax Service Provider Edition met flexibility and reliability requirements. It was easy to use and understand. The interface works well. The XM Fax system is very stable and responsive. OpenText has been very accommodating regarding customization of XM Fax and accomplished it all within the 10-week timeline and within budget.

Rick Green
Vice President and CIO, TriWest Healthcare Alliance

“We were seeking a quick and cost-effective solution for processing healthcare services requests across our vast network. Given the breadth of our geographic coverage, government processing standards, HIPAA regulations, and stringent security guidelines, our requirements and expectations were extremely unique and exacting,” said Rick Green, TriWest VP and CIO.

TriWest required a fax server solution that would be secure, robust and flexible enough to handle its 6.6 million pages of inbound and outbound faxes per year. These faxes, consisting mainly of TRICARE healthcare services requests, reports and daily correspondence, would translate into an estimated 554,000 fax pages per month or 28,000 per day.

For this high fax volume, traditional analog faxing would be extremely time-consuming and expensive. TriWest no longer wanted to deal with the hassle and cost of analog POTS lines, specialized hardware, supplies, toners and paper.

In order to meet the requirements of their new DoD contract, TriWest needed the new system to be in place and adapted to their existing Cisco infrastructure, with custom code for workflow management and audit tracking, and integration with TriWest’s mission-critical medical management system (MaxMC) within just ten weeks.

OpenText™ XM Fax™ was put in place quickly, including extensive integrations, before the deadline. TriWest can securely transmit highly confidential healthcare information in accordance with contractual government service level agreements (SLAs), per the Department of Defense Information Technology Security Certification & Accreditation Process (DITSCAP) in order to maintain the government’s Authority to Operate (ATO) certification.

Rick continued, “XM Fax SP met flexibility and reliability requirements. It was easy to use and understand. The interface works well. The XM Fax system is very stable and responsive.”

In addition to meeting the conditions of the DoD contract, TriWest saw significant savings of approximately $500,000 per year and capacity boosts allowing them to almost double their daily incoming/outgoing fax load to 45,000 pages. They were also able to expand system coverage to encompass 90 locations compared to their initial fax deployment across 32.

TriWest Healthcare Alliance is a very satisfied customer. As a result, their future growth plans include continued partnership with OpenText.

Rick concluded, “OpenText has been very accommodating regarding customization of XM Fax. The customization was not just about adding new features and functions, but implementing architectural changes to better fit our environment and unique business processes with regards to medical emergencies and government contract requirements. OpenText accomplished it all within the 10-week timeline and within budget.”

About TriWest Healthcare Alliance

Established in 1996, TriWest Healthcare Alliance is a Phoenix-based corporation that employs 1,600 people in the 21-state TRICARE West Region. TriWest contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to provide access to cost-effective, high-quality healthcare for three million active and retired military members and their families.