| La Cruz Azul de Puerto Rico chooses Benefitfocus for electronic enrollment
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| Mount Pleasant, SC and San Juan, Puerto Rico - May 10, 2005 - La Cruz Azul de Puerto Rico, Blue Cross of Puerto Rico, has chosen Benefitfocus.com, Inc. to provide benefit enrollment software and services to its approximately 180,000 members. Benefitfocus is the first in Puerto Rico to provide a robust, enterprise-wide and multi-lingual electronic enrollment system that serves human resources administrators, brokers and members.
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| "Benefitfocus understands the business, and has the experience of working with ten other Blue plans in the United States," said Hector Moreno, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for La Cruz Azul de Puerto Rico. "Benefitfocus effortlessly adapted to our business processes and standards."
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| "We are excited to add La Cruz Azul to our growing list of Blue Cross Blue Shield partners," said Shawn Jenkins, President and CEO of Benefitfocus.com, Inc. "The convergence of the demand for Spanish support with the demand for transforming our healthcare system is creating a massive business opportunity, one for which we are ideally suited."
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| Benefitfocus eEnrollment is an electronic benefit enrollment software application that replaces traditional paper-based enrollment and administration. It is easy-to-use and delivered via the Internet. A key feature of the software is the one-to-many database design that integrates easily with insurance carrier, payroll and human resources information systems. It supports open enrollment, new hire enrollment, ongoing maintenance and COBRA.
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| La Cruz Azul plans to offer its members a comprehensive array of self-service tools including benefit enrollment, eligibility verification and claims verification. The carrier expects significant return on investment due to increased operational efficiencies resulting from less paperwork, accurate data and consistently accurate claims.
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| Additionally, Moreno said that bi-lingual support was a major part of their decision to choose Benefitfocus. "Having bi-lingual capability is critical, and our English and Spanish market demands it."
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| "As we cross another significant milestone—five years in business—we’re beginning the ascent of one of the toughest yet most rewarding mountains to climb: technology and support for multi-language/multi-cultural benefits," said Jenkins. "Support for Spanish will be launched this summer as we enter our sixth year. Our customer support and software engineering divisions will be capable of handling multiple languages simultaneously. We’ll certainly get a good view of what the next five years will hold for international expansion."
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| La Cruz Azul will be providing electronic enrollment to its large and small groups, but will begin rolling the system out for a select number of large groups. "Our intention is to have 100 percent adoption long-term," said Moreno. Benefitfocus has had enormous success with technology adoption, from 65% to 100% with its current partners.
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| "We will transition our existing membership to the eEnrollment platform enhancing the services we offer to our clients, agents and brokers," said Moreno. "True to our promise of continuing to invest in technology, we are excited with the new capabilities that we are implementing for our clients."
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About Benefitfocus
Benefitfocus.com, Inc. (Benefitfocus) is a leading provider of benefits administration software and services, offering employees and employers access to all benefits and human resource information securely over the Internet. Linking this data to payroll vendors and benefit providers, Benefitfocus applications seamlessly exchange data, therefore reducing errors and costs associated with traditional paper-based forms. Benefitfocus applications are designed to make companies more efficient, cost-effective, and more focused on delivering actual benefits instead of spending time on undue paperwork.
The company is headquartered in Mount Pleasant, SC (Charleston), and has an established client base of over 8,000 corporate employers in all fifty states.
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About La Cruz Azul
La Cruz Azul de Puerto Rico, Inc. is a leading provider of employee health care benefits and insurance. For over 60 years La Cruz Azul de P.R. Puerto Rico, Inc. (LCA) has served Puerto Rico. LCA is a stock corporation organized under the provisions of the Insurance Code of Puerto Rico licensed to issue disability insurance, including health insurance policies. Its major stockholder is Independence Blue Cross Blue Shield (IBC) of Philadelphia (ranked 7th among all health insurance carriers in the US). IBC and LCA are members of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, an association of independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, which provides health care coverage to more than sixty-five (65) million insureds. It strives to provide its members affordable health care solutions in the most efficient manner possible. It is committed to service excellence and to the continuous improvement of our organization as it establishes the gold standard for the industry. La Cruz Azul can be reached at 787.272.7825.
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