POMCO puts insurance information online for consumers
Program gives workers, health-care providers access to a company's benefits plan.

By James T. Mulder, Syracuse Newspapers, May 1, 2001

A Syracuse company has launched an Internet program designed to take the hassle out of checking the status of insurance claims and obtaining other health benefits information for employees, employers and doctors.

POMCO, an Eastwood company that is one of the nation's largest independently owned third-party insurance benefits administrators, says the new program, called "Benefitsoft," will revolutionize the way people get information about employer-sponsored benefits.

The program instantly shows if a claim has been paid, explains why it was or wasn't paid, whether a patient is enrolled in a company's health plan and other information. It provides secured access to the information to designated employers, employees and doctors.

To get that information now, people often have to call insurance companies and wait on hold while a customer service representative hunts for the record.

"Getting information like this from a carrier can be tough because you're dealing on the blind side of things," said Bob Pomfrey, POMCO's president. "This brings all the information online to all the parties involved, similar to checking your bank account or 401(k) account online."

POMCO is not an insurance company. As a third-party administrator, it maintains records and processes claims for employers, many of them municipalities, who are self-insured. POMCO, which has 250 employees, serves more than 100 employers.

Before it developed the Internet-based program, POMCO would furnish its clients' human resources offices with computer terminals that provide direct access via modem to employee enrollment records and claim status information at POMCO. The company is in the process of rolling out the program to its clients.

"We approached this product as a great time-saver for our clients," Pomfrey said. "The savings human resources can get out of this is tremendous because they don't have to respond directly to every employee inquiry. It's almost like self service."

He said the program also will make life easier at doctors' offices, which process huge volumes of insurance paperwork.

"It used to be 80 percent of phone calls were from claimants, now they are physicians' offices checking on the status of claims," Pomfrey said.

In addition to its own clients, POMCO will market the program to employers who aren't self-funded and cover their employees through insurance carriers.

Marc Flood, POMCO's director of sales and marketing, said some of the big insurance carriers have developed or are in the process of developing similar programs for use solely by their own clients. Benefitsoft is different because it can be used by any employer, regardless of whether they are self-insured or what insurance carrier they use.

Purplewire, a division of Syracuse Research Corp., helped POMCO develop the program.

"Unlike many Internet-only companies seeking to create a niche role in the benefits management arena, POMCO has been at the forefront for more than 20 years," Pomfrey said. "It is our plan to set the pace nationally for technological capabilities involving employee benefits information management via the Internet."

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