TriWest Receives Excellence Award for Streamlining Process, Improving Coordination of Care

PHOENIX, Dec. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- For its efforts to dramatically improve a once labor intensive workflow process that resulted in streamlining the tracking and coordination of care to military families, TriWest Healthcare Alliance received the Arizona Quality Alliance Showcase in Excellence Award in December 2010.

Before the development of the "Performance Reporting System II," (PRS II), inventory reports took managers hours to decipher. In fact, managers would often come into work early, just to run endless reports and determine what work needed to be completed and in what order. Now, managers and employees can access that information in seconds, with just the click of a mouse.

A team of TriWest employees worked for the past two years to develop PRS II, which is a software system that automates extensive inventory reports, such as pending authorizations, continued stay reviews and clinical tasks. It was implemented for Utilization Management in five TriWest hubs, as well as for Case Management in both the five hubs and corporate office.

"I'm extremely proud of the hard work and dedication the Showcase in Excellence Award represents," said TriWest President and CEO David J. McIntyre, Jr. "Improving our workflow process allowed us to further support our mission: providing the best in customer service and access to care for our nation's military and their families."

About TriWest

TriWest Healthcare Alliance partners with the Department of Defense to do "Whatever It Takes" to support the healthcare needs of 2.7 million members of America's military family. A Phoenix-based corporation, TriWest provides access to cost-effective, high-quality health care in the 21-state TRICARE West Region. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, or visit http://www.triwest.com for more information.

About Arizona Quality Alliance

The Arizona Quality Alliance is an alliance of organizations that promotes and recognizes performance excellence through the Arizona Performance Excellence Award Program, feedback for improvement, professional development workshops, benchmarking tours, networking opportunities, training to assess and evaluate organizations, and mentoring. Receiving a Showcase in Excellence Award is recognition for specific process excellence. To earn the award, a process must demonstrate innovation, a cutting-edge approach, excellence in comparison to competitors or peers, or overall exceptional performance.

SOURCE TriWest Healthcare Alliance