Optimisation of paper-based invoice processing

Project target - more efficient recognition of TARMED documents

Our client, a Swiss health and accident insurer, set up an internal scanning centre in 2011, which digitised all incoming mail. However, recognition of invoice items on 500,000 or so TARMED documents was still carried out by an external service provider, even though the costs, processing time and quality were not satisfactory from our client's point of view.

Our client therefore decided to carry out a project which would recognize items on TARMED invoices, without having to use the external provider.  In a second phase the platform was further developed to recognize invoice items not in TARMED format and to realize further savings. This case study examines phase I of the project, the recognition of invoices in TARMED format.

Services from Inacta

Inacta clarified the feasibility of insourcing TARMED invoice recognition and was responsible for developing the business case. After the client’s management approved the project, Inacta supported the client whilst it selected a solution for reading medical invoices. Based on the project’s specifications, the focus was on proven solutions already established on the market: a flexible platform for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and data extraction. 

During the implementation phase of the project, Inacta was responsible for the architecture and interface capabilities of this platform, and the testing, implementation and training stages. Inacta was responsible for the systematic collection and evaluation of the client’s requirements and for managing the adaptation of the client’s standard solution. 

Inacta supported its client during testing of the new solution and in training end users, ensuring that their feedback was taken into account. Such feedback included, for example, shortcuts for faster operation or advanced formulae to allow the automatic calculation of certain invoice parameters.

Results

After a project duration of around 10 months, the solution was implemented on the target date and within the initially defined budget. In fact, the agreed functional scope was slightly exceeded. The processing times projected in the business case were achieved as were the forecast savings. During the second phase, an additional investment enabled us to further reduce processing times. 

Benefits for the customer

User acceptance is high and the efficiency of the process has been improved. The client can also now adjust more readily to fluctuations in the quantity of incoming mail as the entire process (digital mailroom, OCR recognition) is under its control.