Curing healthcare archiving ailments

 Iron Mountain enables CPAM Versailles to guarantee the traceability of its archives and better detect fraudulent activity

Challenge:

Reducing archiving costs and assuring traceability throughout the archiving process

Solution:

Document management system and online portal enabling papers to be securely transported, stored, located, and retrieved

Value:

Archiving processes have been optimised and €1.6 million of fraudulent payments have been recovered

Client

Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie (CPAM) Versailles is one of the top four such funds in France. It enables social security recipients to access sickness, maternity, invalidity, occupational health, and workplace accident services. It also monitors healthcare expenses and promotes disease prevention programmes. Covering more than 1.5 million insured persons and 6,300 healthcare professionals, CPAM Versailles has a local network of 22 branches, each specialising in areas such as pharmacy or dentistry.

Challenge

With its responsibility for a huge volume of documents, archive management is a critical activity for CPAM Versailles. For example, in managing payment centres in the Yvelines area, it draws up more than 27 million itemised statements every year.

The 19 people in the Warehousing and Transport Department are responsible for those archives, which amount to nearly 35,000 boxes on 550 pallets every year. Traceability of archives has always been a major concern. Indeed, all financial papers involved in the payment of professionals and insured parties become legal documents in the event of court disputes. Accountants run the risk of criminal liability and are obliged to be able to locate files at any time.

"The archiving programme we have put in place is a formidable weapon in the fight against fraud. It has enabled our department to recover more than €1.6 million. This would not have been possible without an effective document management system."

Jean-Jacques Larcher
Warehousing and Transport Division Manager
CPAM Versailles

CPAM Versailles decided to reorganise its archive management. Fabrice Hénault, Archive Manager at CPAM Versailles, explains: "Document management was a real challenge. Administration was highly complex as paper archives, forms, and filing furniture had to be managed simultaneously. Sometimes we would spend hours looking for files. Having our own premises for archive storage would have been too expensive, with the scarcity of land in Yvelines."

In considering possible document management solutions, CPAM Versailles set itself the following goals:

• Optimise archive management costs
• Assure that premises offer security and protection against theft and fire
• Provide scalable storage capacity
• Introduce complete end-to-end traceability for each archived document

An Iron Mountain solution was chosen, bringing numerous advantages, including access to the company’s high-security storage centres and trained staff.

Solution

CPAM Versailles used Iron Mountain expertise to help redesign its archiving system, while an online XARC document management portal was added to the solution. This secure interface makes it possible to virtualise the entire document management process, from indexing to destruction, regardless of archive location.

Under French social security law, paper documents must be kept for 33 months for reimbursement requests and five years in the event of disputes. With the help of Iron Mountain, CPAM Versailles implemented a filing plan. Documents are categorised based on their destruction date. Archive boxes are normally kept in branches for an initial period of six months, followed by six months in the CPAM Versailles warehouse, before being transported to an Iron Mountain secure storage centre.

Stringent measures are taken to ensure document traceability. Each branch uses the XARC portal to index the archives, generate barcodes, and issue removal requests. Furthermore, to ensure the conformity of batches during transport, a verification system operates at each stage in the process. Barcodes with essential information (branch number, year, destruction date) are printed on each box and each pallet used to transport the documents. This tells CPAM Versailles the precise location of a particular archive at any time – whether it is in a branch, in the warehouse, or at the Iron Mountain storage site.

"The system is very flexible and allows us to increase or decrease the volume of archives based on our requirements. Now, staff in our department cannot do without the solution."

Fabrice Hénault
Archive Manager
CPAM Versailles

Value

Document retrieval requests are made via the XARC portal. Iron Mountain retrieves urgent documents within 24 hours and non-urgent documents within 48 hours. This may be extended up to 15 days for very large volume retrievals.

The XARC system issues an alert when an archive comes to the end of its lifecycle. The accountant may then authorise Iron Mountain to destroy it securely, or request continued document storage and retrieval facilities if fraud has been suspected.

Jean-Jacques Larcher, Warehousing and Transport Division Manager at CPAM Versailles, says: "The archiving programme we have put in place is a formidable weapon in the fight against fraud. It has enabled our department to recover more than €1.6 million. This would not have been possible without an effective document management system."

The XARC system allocates different levels of access to information, ensuring security. Branches with user status can therefore only access data relating to themselves, while administrators can monitor all document management-related activities. Accordingly, they can issue the necessary authorisations and correct errors if needed.

Jean-Jacques Larcher concludes: "The application provides immediate traceability throughout the monitored cycle. The Iron Mountain solution ensures that documents are not lost and keeps a record of all exchanges. We can also rest assured that our records are stored in good conditions with optimal security."

Fabrice Hénault adds: "The system is very flexible and allows us to increase or decrease the volume of archives based on our requirements. Now, staff in our department cannot do without the solution."