Cognizant sees big money in Health Insurance Portability Act

Anand Krishnamoorthy in Chennai

Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) is extremely bullish about the opportunities created by the Health Insurance Portability Act, USA (HIPAA). The firm has set up a HIPAA competency centre and has about 200 professionals across India working on HIPAA-related solutions, said company officials. Industry estimates the IT spending on HIPAA compliance at $43 billion.

“We have a robust pipeline of HIPPA orders and have successfully executed large projects in the past. We provide end-to-end solutions and our strong health care domain expertise put us ahead of competitors. Also, despite the economic downturn the IT spend by healthcare companies has been resilient,” said Mr Mohan Narayan, director, healthcare practice, CTS, in a meeting with The Financial Express. However, company officials declined to reveal the revenue estimates from HIPAA practice.

HIPPA impacts all health care organisations-from single physician offices to large life insurers. The deadline for the code set compliancy is September 2002 and privacy compliancy is September 2003.

“HIPAA timeline is fast approaching and most health care organisations in the US have begun assessment of the impact,” said a CTS official. Also, firms face pressure from business partners to hasten the pace of HIPAA compliance.

On the possibility of a spate of HIPAA-related business coming to Indian firms, Mr Narayan says, “ HIPAA is a business problem. It requires domain expertise in the health care space. So, not many Indian companies would be able to tap the market. They could think about aligning with frontline HIPAA solution providers to do some backend work.”

The HIPAA competency centre at CTS has a 20-member team and has been operational for a year. It has developed tools and methodologies for quick and cost-effective solutions.

“Significant investments have been made in the competency centre,” Mr Narayan added.

Typically, a HIPAA implementation has a planning and pre-assessment phase and moves on to assessment where the entities such as code set, EDI, privacy and security assessment are carried out. The re-mediation and testing are carried out for the entities. After which, the HIPPA compliance is checked and the post compliance monitoring is done.

CTS has about 18 clients from the health care space in a client pool of 95. Health care practice accounted for 26 per cent of the company’s revenues for the quarter ended September 2001. “HIPPA will provide us an opportunity to provide services to new clients and broaden our client base,” said company officials.

Recently, the company bagged a multi-million dollar order from Blue Cross, USA, a leading health insurer to undertake end to end HIPAA compliance.