Comprehensive, Integrated Document Management
TRICARE Management Activity (TMA)
Department of Defense (DoD)
Challenge
To meet the roughly one-quarter of the Department of Defense's overall health care needs that are not provided at local military hospitals and clinics, the department's TRICARE Management Activity (TMA) contracts for networks of civilian providers across the country. Each year, as benefits are expanded and as improvements are made to routine business processes-from billing procedures to the computerization of patient records-TMA must negotiate complex modifications to these contracts. Because these contracts authorize payments to civilian providers of approximately $4.7 billion a year, TMA carefully documents each step in the negotiation and conclusion of every new contract or modification to an existing contract.
Given the rapid pace of the program's benefits expansion and business process improvements, the agency quickly amassed a 3 million-page backlog of these documents. Committed to maintaining a clear, transparent record of the management of all contracts, the agency recognized that it required the help of a company that could establish a method for classifying, cataloging, and archiving these documents that would enable contract managers to quickly identify and retrieve documents specific to each contract. Axiom was called upon to design and implement an efficient electronic archive using Documentum, then-recently developed commercial, off-the-shelf, document-management software.
Strategy
TMA manages the world's largest unified health system, and is adapting "e-Commerce" applications to its management of health care and other contracts to strengthen financial controls and increase administrative efficiency. Axiom saw the opportunity for integrating TMA's electronic archive into this overall "e-Commerce" initiative, allowing the agency's many divisions and directorates with responsibility for contract management to access important historical records. We established a Document Management Working Group with representation from TMA's acquisition directorate and other, closely related divisions.
After carefully identifying the work routines and requirements of document users, our staff developed a content management process that helps track contract documents from initial drafting to contract close-out, and is especially useful for tracking the negotiations of all contract modifications. After customizing Documentum to meet the specific needs of the document users and the department's stringent security requirements, we ensured that all licensing requirements were met, supervised the deployment of this software package, and trained TMA personnel on its use.
Impact
With Axiom's support, the client has created a comprehensive archive of contract documentation. Old, "hard-copy only" documents are being scanned and converted to computerized records. All records are screened to determine their historical importance and catalogued for the new digital archive. When complete, this secure archive will allow contract managers deployed around the country to quickly access, update, and share pertinent records. Automatically, a separate record is kept of each access and modification of a record, as well as a record of any determination and authorization to delete a record.