Vancouver, Washington — Insurance brokers and general agents were the first and unexpected customers to use AREScms®, a SaaS product that provides operational efficiencies, agent management and cost saving solutions. Insurance sales and marketing professionals realized the value to their businesses for reliable, failsafe protection from the massive health care fraud, waste and abuse issues that plague America’s health care system. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) release of its 2015 Improper Payment Report shows that the improper payments rate for 2015 was 12.1 percent, costing taxpayers $43.3 billion. With health plan reimbursements expected to be impacted the need for cost savings and efficiency are a must to survive in the increasingly competitive health insurance industry.
Just last year veteran health care software designer Daryl Price of West Linn, Oregon, believed there was a better way to address the needs of the hundreds of health plans relying on expensive “big box” customer relationship management (CRM) systems. His team created a CRM-like product initially for Medicare and Medicaid plans. Price thought it would be snapped up by health plans struggling to achieve positive ROI in the new Affordable Care Act (ACA) economy. So AREScms, www.AREScms.com, an affordable and comprehensive health plan information system was born.
“We hit our sales goal for 2015, but it was the customers of AREScms that surprised us,” said Price. “Brokers, insurance professionals and their agencies created an unexpected demand, buying our cloud-based SaaS application almost immediately after we demonstrated the product.”
AREScms is now available for all health plan products, and the product is far more flexible and less costly than any other CRM on the market. According to Price, AREScms is at about half the cost of other products and does not charge a per-user fee. This gives health plans of all sizes, small insurance brokerage firms and FMO’s a highly functional, affordable and compliant tool for unlimited users.
The first clients for 2016 Annual Enrollment Period, (AEP) were UnityAdvisors and its sister company Keystone Medicare Advisors in western Pennsylvania. The Insurance Store in Lake Oswego, Oregon and its subsidiary The Insurance Store NW bought the AREScms system in March and will implement it in its existing and new stores and affiliate agents in the Pacific Northwest.
“AREScms is core to our strategic growth plan and we believe it will become the industry standard for
compliance, the product is far superior to anything else available in the insurance industry,” says Victoria Bramley, president of The Insurance Store. “AREScms keeps the multitude of agents affiliated with my agency compliant, tracks their leads and streamlines the sales cycle. I am able to monitor all of our costs, improve efficiencies in the sales process and greatly reduce waste, all in real time.” Bramley plans to use AREScms this year for a major expansion of her brick and mortar stores throughout Oregon and into Washington State.
While Bramley calls AREScms the perfect solution for an agency that sells a variety of health products, including Medicare and Medicaid, major health plans are now also taking a hard look at AREScms. Price and his team have received multiple requests for demonstrations across the country.
“Platform adopters are thrilled to learn that there is no company core-system software installation required. The end-user only needs a compatible browser and we can support them,” Price says. “Assistance from the technology department is virtually unnecessary. Installation can be completed quickly and efficiently.”
Another feature built into AREScms is a unique software development life cycle process not seen previously in health plan customer management technology environments. AREScms applies new functionality into the application for better end-user support and security, while operating seamlessly under the workflows and tasks for complete two-way government-compliant sales, marketing and enrollment.
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Based in Vancouver, Washington, AREScms is an acquisition, retention and enrollment solution–Customer Management System. For more information or product demonstrations, go to AREScms.com or contact Paul Leffler, AREScms operations at (877) 880-5737 or [email protected].
Press contact: Mara Woloshin, 503-310-4504 [email protected] 24/7
