Daily Archives: August 5, 2008

Claro’s Crystal Customs

Our last post re-introduced you to Claro and their successful sourcing practice. Today’s post is going to cover the other parts of their consulting practice and their particular areas of specialty.

Claro now has four primary areas of specialization:

  • Sourcing & Procurement
    From Spend Analysis through Contract Management to Procure-to-Pay, Claro has capabilities across the sourcing and procurement spectrum and their partnership with Ketera allows them to not only utilize modern e-Sourcing tools on a client’s behalf, but leave them behind as well. (Of course, a client should do its own analysis of marketing leading and best-of-breed sourcing and procurement solutions, including Ariba, BIQEmptoris, Enporion, and Iasta, among others, before blindly choosing the Ketera solution, because, even though Ketera might be the right fit, it might not.)
  • Insurance and Claims Management
    First party and third party claims management on behalf of insurance companies and organizations that need to make a large number of insurance related claims
  • Healthcare
    Revenue Cycle Management, DRG/Clinical Documentation Support, Healthcare Process Improvement, Self-Pay Management, Drug Discount Programs, and other healthcare services. Claro has worked with over 450 hospitals across the US both individually and in health systems of up to 25 hospitals. They’ve also worked with large academic medical centers.
  • Bankruptcy
    Claro has just started a new bankruptcy practice out of their New York office to help those clients that are being hit hardest by a market that has given us the double whammy of stagflation.

Their background gives them particular strength in insurance and healthcare. For example, they recently helped one of the largest insurance providers in the country optimize their benefit plans to save themselves, and their clients, millions of dollars. They’re also one of the few consultancies that has leave-behind software for hospitals that helps those hospitals improve their service offerings while capturing more insurance payments.

Furthermore, in healthcare, they can help a hospital save money and increase revenue by helping them improve their DRG/Clinical Documentation. In the US, there are now approximately 700 Diagnosis-Related Groups and the proper classification of a diagnosis is critical as the benefit paid to a hospital for a given illness is often fixed based on the original DRG classification. Misclassifying a complex pneumonia as a simple pneumonia can cost a hospital hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. Claro’s expert group, which includes medical doctors, can help a hospital improve it’s processes to insure that the diagnosis is correctly captured every time and that the hospital is able to claim all of the insurance premiums that it is due.

When you combine their insurance expertise with their healthcare process expertise and their sourcing expertise, one quickly sees that they often do their best work in hospitals and health care systems as they can improve efficiency, save money, and increase insurance billings in a single project. They’re definitely one of the few small jewel consulting firms to look at if you’re a health care provider.