Methods and systems for comparing employee insurance plans among peer groups

Abstract

The present invention is directed towards methods and systems for a benchmark based comparison of an employee insurance plan of an organization to employee insurance plans from other organizations in a peer group. The present invention enables a user to enter details about an employee insurance plan of a first organization and allows the user to compare the insurance plan to a benchmark computed from data collected from a plurality of organizations in a peer group of the first organization. The comparison report does not identify the organizations from which data is collected.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method of comparison of insurance plans of employees among a peer group, the method comprising the steps of:
 (a) receiving, by a web interface from a user, data on a plurality of attributes of an insurance plan of an employee associated with an organization;   (b) receiving, by the web interface from the user, one or more attributes as comparison criteria;   (c) performing, by a computing device in communication with the web interface, a comparison criteria based comparison of user provided data to a benchmark associated with a plurality of insurance plans of employees of a peer group of the organization;   (d) generating at least one report based on the comparison;   (e) providing, by the web interface to the user, the at least one report.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the peer group is a group of organizations substantially similar to the organization of the user in one or more of the following: number of employees, line of business, location, turnover, profit margin, and product. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 1  wherein the comparison criteria includes one or more of an employer attribute, a location attribute, a plan attribute, a bid attribute, a price specification item attribute, a benefit attribute and a vendor attribute. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1  further comprising computing, by the server, the benchmark for comparison of insurance plans among peer groups, the benchmark being based on mathematical operations on data collected for a plurality of insurance plans of employees among the peer group. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1  wherein information identifying an organization in the peer group is not disclosed in the at least one report. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1  further comprising controlling an access and permissions of the user. 
     
     
         10 . A method of using a benchmark for comparison of insurance plans among a peer group of an organization, the method comprising the steps of:
 (a) selecting one or more attributes as benchmark criteria for a plurality of insurance plans of the peer group of the organization;   (b) accessing, by a computing device, data on the attributes for the plurality of insurance plans;   (c) transforming, by the computing device, the data for each of the plurality of insurance plans to one or more canonical forms using one or more mathematical operations on the data, the canonical forms enabling mathematical comparisons across the plurality of insurance plans;   (d) creating a benchmark comprising a set of data through operations on one or more canonical forms;   (c) storing the benchmark; and   (f) outputting, by the computing device, the benchmark for comparing an insurance plan of the organization to the benchmark, the attributes of comparison provided by an user.   
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 10 , wherein the peer group is a group of organizations substantially similar to the organization of the user in one or more of the following: number of employees, line of business, location, turnover, profit margin, and product. 
     
     
         12 . The method of  claim 10  further comprising creating a composite benchmark criteria based on one or more attributes of the benchmark. 
     
     
         13 . The method of  claim 10  further comprising defining a relationship between the one or more attributes. 
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 10  further comprising associating a quantitative score with each of the one or more attributes. 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 10  wherein the benchmark criteria includes one or more of an employer attribute, a location attribute, a plan attribute, a bid attribute, a price specification item attribute, a benefit attribute and a vendor attribute. 
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 10  further comprising classifying the data on the plurality of insurance plans into one or more classes, the classes being defined based on one or more attributes by an administrator. 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 16  further comprising defining a relationship between the one or more classes. 
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 16  further comprising associating a quantitative score with each of the one or more classes. 
     
     
         19 . A system of presenting a comparison of insurance plans, the system comprising:
 a database which stores information on a plurality of attributes of a plurality of employee insurance plans;   a server, in communication with the database, which processes information stored in the database based on information from a client and one or more rules, and identifies at least one peer group within organizations associated with the plurality of insurance plans; and   the client, in communication with the server, providing information on an insurance plan associated with an organization, to the server and receiving at least one report, the report generated responsive to and comparing the provided information to a benchmark data calculated by the server with respect to an identified peer group of the organization.   
     
     
         20 . The system of  claim 19 , wherein the server identifies a peer group based on substantial similarity to the organization in one or more of the following: number of employees, line of business, location, turnover, profit margin, and product. 
     
     
         21 . The system of  claim 19  further comprising an Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) unit managing data transport between the server and the database. 
     
     
         22 . The system of  claim 20  further comprising an adaptor, in communication with the ETL unit, generating a value of an attribute stored in the database. 
     
     
         23 . The system of  claim 19  further comprising one or more subsystems for performing the following: authentication and access control, attribute management and report management. 
     
     
         24 . The system of  claim 19 , wherein the client comprises an user interface. 
     
     
         25 . The system of  claim 19 , wherein the client comprises an administrator interface.