Affinity Health Plan Selects SAS® Business Intelligence To Help Make Healthier Decisions

Business Wire, July 25, 2007

CARY, N.C. -- Affinity Health Plan has selected the SAS Enteprise BI Server to help improve its decision-making processes and enhance customer service. SAS, the leader in business intelligence, will help Affinity Health Plan further its mission, through the more skillful use of data, to maximize its effectiveness to Members, providers and employees.

Founded in 1986, Affinity Health Plan is an independent, not-for-profit managed care company serving the needs of low- and moderate-income populations in the New York metropolitan area. Having grown rapidly over the last several years, it found itself in the position of having data housed in disparate systems that led to frequent data reporting issues. Affinity turned to SAS to help centralize its data and provide a common understanding of data definitions.

Affinity's programs, like those of all the other Medicaid managed care organizations, are government-sponsored. Though most Medicaid managed care organizations offer the same government-sponsored programs, Affinity differentiates itself through the outstanding customer service it provides Members, providers and other stakeholders.

"SAS will become an integral part of the strategic tools we use to deliver top customer service to our Members," said Jim Carmona, Affinity's Senior Vice President of Operations. "In addition, SAS will help us better analyze our medical costs in order to get a firmer grasp on our operating dynamics."

SAS Enterprise BI Server will help Affinity strengthen its capacity to detect underutilization or overutilization of services, including the resulting effect on costs, revenue, customer satisfaction and service delivery. While underutilization will spur Affinity to strengthen Member education and clinical outreach programs, overutilization might alert Affinity to possible system abuse.

The SAS Enterprise BI Server provides a complete portfolio of BI capabilities and applies the power of SAS analytics and data integration to create a complete and easy-to-use BI solution. SAS Enterprise BI Server provides a fully-integrated and comprehensive suite of BI software that addresses the needs of IT management as well as business users.

About SAS

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