Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico plans to transfer all its routine claims-processing functions to one or more outside companies over the next two years, but the “net impact to jobs hasn’t been determined,” a Blue Cross official said this week.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re reducing jobs,” said Janice Torrez, a divisional vice president and chief of staff.”There are changes to the roles of the group-claims operations, but with our continual growth there will be new positions.”
Chicago-based Health Care Services Corp., which owns the Blue Cross operation in New Mexico, Illinois, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas, expands its use of outside vendors when an outside company can do certain jobs more efficiently while maintaining high quality, Torrez said.
The change will happen over the next 18 to 24 months as the claims processing functions done by workers at the Blue Cross call center on Alexander NE are moved to Accenture — a global outsourcing company Health Care Services Corp. has used in the past — and possibly other vendors, Torrez said.
About 600 of the Blue Cross workforce of around 1,400 in New Mexico work at the call center. Torrez would say only that a “small percentage” of the call center employees process claims, while many others provide customer service support for people insured under the Affordable Care Act. She also said complex claims will still be handled by employees at the Albuquerque call center.
Torrez said Blue Cross has added several hundred employees in the past five years as it took on a total of around 200,000 new policy holders from Lovelace Health System, from a contract to manage the Medicaid Centennial care program and from those who signed up through the Health Exchange under the Affordable Care Act. Blue Cross now has about 600,000 policy holders in New Mexico.
Date: May 12, 2015