Organizations Turn to EMC Documentum xCP to Rapidly Build Case Based Applications

PHILADELPHIA, AIIM Conference, EMC Booth #1525 - April 22, 2010 -

EMC® Corporation (NYSE:EMC), the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced that organizations including Emory Healthcare, AMB Property Corporation and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services have built case-based applications using EMC Documentum® xCP. Applications developed on Documentum xCP enable customers to reduce cycle time, improve compliance and promote business agility.

Emory Healthcare is the largest healthcare system in Georgia, with 30 health centers, approximately 1,200 beds and 10,000 employees serving the metro Atlanta area. With a wide range of services offered across many campuses, Emory has no shortage of data, all resident on different platforms. Dedra Cantrell, chief information officer of Emory Healthcare, described the "tribal knowledge" held by various departments on patients as isolated stores of information located within a variety of applications across the organization, handed down within each silo, but not easily transferable or accessible to others across Emory Healthcare.

Emory deployed an Enterprise Patient Access (EPA) system allowing them to harvest the information, manage it and send it to the right people for action. The system leveraged applications already in place in the organization, linking 10 systems from a variety of vendors, including Documentum xCP from EMC; hospital patient management system from McKesson; scheduling, registration and billing system for the organization's clinics from GE/IDX; EMR system from Cerner Millennium; and a patient denial database and other niche homegrown systems. Parallel goals in this effort were to improve knowledge management inside Emory, increase efficiencies in internal processes and improve the patient experience.

"With the EPA system, we now have one source of truth for provider information. Efficiencies were gained in eliminating duplicate steps and paper forms to fill out. It allows employees involved across the organization -- financial managers, administrators and clinicians – to access information, take actions, respond to triggers initiated by the system and track who does what, all in a HIPAA-compliant platform," said Cantrell. "In addition, employees who interact with patients now have all the tools and information at their disposal allowing them to update and validate information held within the system as well as respond to any requests related to a patient."

The Documentum xCP-based EPA system has also been integrated with Emory's existing personal health record and patient portal. This allows patients to update their information, complete forms and access medical history and test results. Emory intends to leverage the EPA system to support implementation of a medical home model as a next step.

AMB Property Corporation is a leading owner, operator and developer of industrial real estate that serves approximately 2,600 customers in 47 markets in 14 countries with a portfolio of 155.1 million square feet (14.4 million square meters). AMB needed a solution that would automate its process for incorporating lease information into their accounting system.

"Our lease process was manual and it heavily relied on e-mail and FTP for file transfers. Each lease was managed as a case file that contained not only the lease but also any supporting or historical documents," said Walter Parton, Application Architect Manager at AMB Property. "Frequently, the files were too big to send via e-mail so they had to be uploaded onto an FTP site. A third-party company would download the files and manually enter the data into our accounting system. The third-party processors printed out the accounting data then scanned and e-mailed it back to the lease administrators for final audit. The list of users, such as property managers, for the final notification was maintained in a spreadsheet and required lookup for each lease that was processed. Also, all issue tracking was done manually through a spreadsheet for determining the third party SLA."

"With the application we developed using Documentum xCP, we estimate a 75 percent reduction in man hours to complete lease entries and updates. As each lease is entered into the system, it automatically kicks off a process where property managers are notified, the supporting documents are found and attached, key data are entered by a third-party company and the appropriate lease administrators review the data for accuracy," added Parton. "We have integrated the application with our accounting system to validate the data and pull additional information related to the lease. Any documents relevant to the property can be associated with the property's case file and will automatically inherit all the relevant metadata; this makes finding information a breeze."

Parton also said that the process flow is driven by the document attribute information, such as the country or market, and it is easy to change the configuration. As a result, it will accommodate different process requirements and it allows AMB to adjust the process without having to do customizations or major changes.

In addition, AMB can automatically age all documents related to a lease to meet compliance. When a lease expires, the system triggers the retention period to start. It can then dispose off the documents based on the company's retention policy.

"Documentum xCP allowed us to build the entire application in six weeks so the return on investment was great," said Parton. "We tailored it to our workflow with minimal effort. We plan on reusing the interface to develop processes that meet the needs of other departments in the organization."

The Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) provides benefits and services to low-income residents of Los Angeles County including temporary financial assistance and employment; free and low-cost healthcare insurance; food benefits; and in-home services for the elderly and disabled. Working with EMC, DPSS is current developing an electronic document management system that will help improve efficiencies and reduce costs associated with their eligibility determination processes.

The manual system is costly, time consuming and labor intensive. A case worker must first sort through 30 to 50 documents to determine an applicant's financial need before circulating to a supervisor who makes the final decision based on the case worker's recommendation. LA County mandates a 30-day approval or denial of eligibility. The case worker holds onto the physical file for 90 days and then moves it to an offsite storage facility for retrieval one year later to re-determine eligibility.

"Using Documentum xCP, we will be able to automate several tasks involved in processing eligibility requirements. First, all documents related to a case are scanned and made available online. The system includes a checklist of eligibility documents and tracks which documents are received," said Carlos Sanchez, Programming Supervisor in the Office of Automation and System Support at DPSS. "Case supervisors can easily review the claim status and see that the checklist has been completed. Next year when the same applicant re-applies for benefits, case workers would be able to go online, review existing documents and would only have to request new information. This greatly improves the speed and efficiency of the decision-making. Having online access will also save us millions of dollars each year in storage and retrieval costs."

"Customer service representatives will be able to provide better service," added Sanchez. "When applicants call into our service center, representatives can provide actual status of their claim, where it is in the process or convey which documents are still missing to complete their file."

DPSS will also be able to increase security in safeguarding the private information contained in each case file. Documentum xCP limits exposure of personal and financial information to minimize identity theft, as well as controls and tracks who has access to information.

Documentum xCP is a dynamic applications composition platform that provides fully integrated technologies, development and deployment tools as well as application accelerators. Emphasizing configuration versus coding, Documentum xCP unites content management, business process management, intelligent capture, customer communications management, collaboration case management, analysis, reporting and compliance management into a single environment. With Documentum xCP, system integrators, independent software vendors and IT organizations can rapidly build intelligent case-based applications substantially faster, at a much lower cost and with fewer resources. The platform also allows organizations to significantly reduce the total cost of ownership by delivering applications that are easier to modify and maintain.

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