As a health maintenance organization (HMO) and point-of-service (POS) plan for western Virginia, Carilion is familiar with the importance of timely, accurate information. Their organization depends on it.

Recognizing the benefits of offering access to real-time data was obvious to Mattie Tenzer, Director, Information Management and her team at Carilion Health Plans. Achieving that benefit with a real solution was another issue.

Since the nature of Carilion’s data download only allowed it to be run monthly, the data was always stale. Carilion needed a solution that would allow them to produce current, up-to-date information reports while achieving a second goal of optimizing disk space usage.

After extensive research investigating different data access and delivery solutions available for the HP e3000, Carilion selected MB Foster’s MBF-UDALink (formerly DataExpress) solution to enable them access to PowerHouse Dictionaries and subfiles while taking advantage of predetermined datatype formatting.

“MBF-UDALink has allowed our efficiency to greatly improve, says Mattie Tenzer, Director, Information Management. ”The real value of this product comes from accomplishing what cannot be done with any other real time, live data access solution.”

With MBF-UDALink (formerly DataExpress), Carilion is able to provide the live audit of data, allowing the IT department to write the framework of reports and let end users run it on their own time frame without submitting project requests to them. Although Carilion is still in the process of deploying most of the end-users projects, it is now able to begin working on the design of other Information Management projects, previously considered impossible.

Carilion hired the MB Foster Service Team to assist, first hand with the deployment of MBF-UDALink within their environment. The MBF Service Rep worked hand in hand with the Information Management team to understand the project environment, elements and requirements for a successful transition. As the product was functioning and the transition of reports beginning, the MBF Service Rep recognized that the PowerHouse module of MBF-UDALink (formerly DataExpress) would handle their data access requirements in a simpler, more effective way than was originally designed by the team.

“It should be noted that the MBF Service Rep identified our needs and a module swap was performed and implemented before they left. The swap involved Carilion receiving a credit, rather than a larger bill,” says Tenzer. Both the MBF Service Rep and Sales Rep were clearly more focused on our success with their product above the difference in costs.”

Carilion also used the MBF Services Department's telephone and email support along with an onsite visit offered to MBF-UDALink customers. During the onsite visit, File Definitions (FDs) were created and installed along with planning future efforts which will allow Carilion to join tables from Amisys and Multiview for viewing through a single data source.

Although MBF-UDALink (formerly DataExpress) has only been deployed for seven months in Carilion’s environment, they already see the benefits achieved through improved efficiency, leaving IT staff free to design new projects. End users now have quicker and timelier access to real time information directly via controlled predefined queries.

“Our experience with both the product and with support has been overwhelmingly positive from the beginning of contract negotiations through to onsite implementation. MB Foster truly forges a strong partnership with its clients. Although we are a relatively small company, MB Foster has made us feel extremely important,” says Tenzer.