Q&A: Connectivity services provider helps workers compensation insurers

Alex Sun

Employers may not recognize Mitchell International Inc.'s name or know they rely on Mitchell's bill review technology, medical care repricing services and data analytics to manage their workers compensation claims costs. The San Diego-based company provides its bill review technology and “connectivity services” to the insurers, third-party administrators and managed care companies that service employers' workers comp claims.

Alex Sun is president and CEO of Mitchell, a company with 1,700 employees and roots reaching back 66 years in the automobile collision claims industry, where its still plays a strong role. Mitchell says its total property/casualty claims processing services now include 50 million transactions annually for more than 300 insurance claims payers, including 150 personal lines insurers, and more than 30,000 auto collision repair facilities in North America.

But under Mr. Sun, who recently spoke with Business Insurance Senior Editor Roberto Ceniceros, Mitchell has expanded within the past several years to provide bill review, medical care repricing services, and claims data analytics to the workers compensation industry.

For certain, employers whose model is to work through a TPA or managed care company, I don't think Mitchell will resonate as well for them. Unless they elect to do research on who are strong providers of technology. If they do play a hand in that determination they will come across us and we will show very well. But if they seed all that decision making to their (workers comp claims management and medical care) partners then I think it's a function of whether or not their partner believes we are the best technology choice.

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As it relates to TPAs and managed care companies many of them use our software as part of the service that they provide to their clients. They use our software to get their job done. Connectivity services we provide, for instance, rely on our strong relationships with Health Care Solutions Inc. and its unit Procura Management, Cofinity Inc., Coventry Health Care Inc., and other major network (medical) providers. And through our relationships with them we are able to provide connectivity for our payer clients to those networks and enable a more efficient workflow and repricing of bills (within) network contracts.

Under our vision, we believe technology could be an incredible enabler in terms of work flow efficiency, not just within the four walls of the payer, but between the payer and the value chain of service providers. We already have a very good track record of being able to provide work-flow technologies on the auto side. We absolutely could envision offering technology solutions that would automate work flows on the casualty side of the business. So while I would say it is fair to say today that we don't have a lot of depth there, I think it's absolutely a focus for us going forward.

Everybody continues to talk about the importance of data and advanced analytics and we believe that we are in a very unique position to bring a great capability to the market on that front. So we are investing a lot of resources in building advanced analytic capability. Tell the market to look out for some good things from us.