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Product Updates

Check back here for monthly updates from Ideon’s product team on the latest enhancements to our Quoting, Decision Support, and Enrollment products. For questions or additional information, please reach out to your Ideon sales representative or email us at sales@ideonapi.com.

Q4 2024

Principal and Humana Ancillary Rating APIs

Quoting—Plan & rate data

We’re excited to announce expansions to our ancillary carrier rating API integrations, with Principal and Humana integrations going live this quarter. Both integrations include real-time quoting for Dental and Vision, starting with plan year 2025. Connecting to carrier APIs enables a consistent quoting experience that optimizes accuracy and delivers identifiers to link quoted plans with sold case processes.

Bulk provider network metadata files

Provider Network Data

Metadata files are now available for all users with access to our bulk provider network data. Each metadata file provides a detailed overview of the contents of each daily provider network data file, allowing you to quickly review what’s included in the latest file without needing to process the entire dataset.

Additionally, all metadata files will be archived and accessible at any time, offering easy access to historical data and enabling your team to efficiently compare metadata between two files based on the most recent refresh of the provider-network dataset. By ensuring quick access to the most relevant data, this feature is aimed to make your workflow more efficient and reliable.

Q3 2024

Quote Proposal API

Quoting—Plan & rate data

The benefits ecosystem is rife with forms and data entry requirements, with double or triple entry of a group’s data becoming a typical time sink. Ideon’s latest product, the Quote Proposal API, helps save brokers hours of duplicate data entry during the case application process.

We’re launching this product with UnitedHealthcare as our first carrier partner. Through this integration, users can select UHC plans for their proposal and receive a URL that navigates to UHC’s SAMx platform. All group, census, quoting, and plan selection data is imported directly, eliminating the need to manually add censuses and re-quote the group.

SBC Digitization

Quoting—Plan & rate data |  Provider Network Data

Building health plan member experiences on top of SBCs is messy and time-consuming. With Ideon’s SBC Digitization, BenTech platforms can rely on accurate, standardized data to build industry-leading end user experiences.

Our SBC Digitization product delivers full data extracts in a standardized and complete grammar schema. Network mapping can be included and combined with Ideon’s provider search tools to support a wide variety of care navigation use cases.

API Performance Optimization

Provider Network Data

The response latency of our Provider Search and Shop by Doc APIs was a major point of emphasis on our 2024 roadmap. We’re excited to announce that we’ve been able to reduce Provider Search latency by 75%, with similar improvements for Medical and Medicare Advantage Plan Search APIs.

Why is this important? When building great user experiences, the details matter. Faster response times from Ideon’s API supports seamless user experiences when navigating the provider landscape or shopping for care. The reduction in API latency results in users spending more time interacting with features and data as opposed to waiting for loading screens.

Q2 2024

New Carrier API Integrations

Quoting—Plan & rate data

We’re excited to announce two new additions to our carrier API quoting integrations: Beam Disability and Optimyl Level Funded.

Beam’s Short and Long Term Disability products are the final components of our integration to Beam’s rating API, bringing real-time rates directly to brokers and groups via a single, scalable point of integration. Ideon’s ancillary quoting inventory now includes all of Beam’s products: Dental, Vision, Life, Disability, Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity.

Optimyl offers Level Funded plans for small employers. We’re kicking off our integration with a 2-state pilot and a plan for national expansion coming soon.

Network Status Alerts

Provider Network Data

Given the vast landscape of carriers and lines of business, provider-network data is challenging to collect, process, review and manage. But we’re confident that we possess the most accurate and comprehensive provider-network dataset in the market, and we’re committed to providing our customers with upfront visibility and analysis of our networks. As part of a larger data transparency initiative, we are releasing Network Status Alerts via our Network Details endpoint. These Network Status Alerts will detail significant changes that occurred with networks in real-time, such as decreases in provider count, newly created networks, expired networks, and deleted networks.

With these alerts, we want customers to gain the insight necessary to quickly make business and operational decisions on the data and in turn, better manage expectations with their clients.

For a quick guide on how to utilize these alerts, please see our updated API documentation for the Network Details and Network Search endpoints.

Provider Network Data Analyzer (PNDA)

Provider Network Data

Ideon maintains the industry’s most comprehensive set of provider network data, which we receive both directly from health plans, and indirectly from hundreds of sources. From our unique position to leverage all of these sources of provider network data, we believe that we’re created a data integrity solution that will drive further accuracy in these vast datasets. 

The Provider Network Data Analyzer is built on top of a statistical model that calculates a score from 0-1 for each provider address, which represents the likelihood that the provider is seeing patients at that location. The model’s scoring output will provide a level of confidence for carriers in their provider data verification processes by enabling decisions to remove significantly low scoring addresses and to keep significantly high scoring addresses.  

By narrowing the verification efforts to a much smaller subset of data, carrier partners will not only be able to boost efficiency and reduce operational costs, but also increase the quality of their data. We want to empower our carrier partners in managing and maintaining quality data within their provider networks, which will ultimately provide better healthcare experiences for their members. 

Q1 2024

Error Flow in Enrollment Dashboard 

Enrollment

Our Ideon Dashboard provides Customers with an easy way to view group and process flow information as well as raise Customer queries. Increased visibility reduces Time to Production for groups and supports effective collaboration between BenTech platforms, Ideon, and carriers.

Now in the Dashboard you can view Enrollment Discrepancies and interact directly with the Ideon team by posting comments or resolution messages. We are continuing to add new features to support effective Enrollment Discrepancy management directly in the Dashboard.

Auto-configuration MVP

Enrollment

Historically the benefits industry required BenTech platforms to apply carrier-specific mapping values before sending member and coverage elections to carriers. Ideon takes on this configuration and mapping process so BenTech partners don’t have to. We ensure the carrier-specific mapping values are sent on the appropriate plans in accordance with the account structure.

The Ideon configuration solution now incorporates enhanced automation, which allows us to automatically ingest account structures and programmatically create the appropriate carrier mappings. We tested this during the recent Open Enrollment Period and were able to configure 1,500 groups per hour with a 0% error rate!

This year we will continue to expand our automatic configuration capabilities for increased speed and accuracy of group configuration and setup.

Any-format Enrollment Distributions

Enrollment

The Ideon system support dual-year Coverage Periods, which allows us to send new Open Enrollment elections to carriers as well as changes to the current year coverages. This ensures that members can be correctly enrolled in new elections and at the same time can add dependents or make changes to current year coverages. The Ideon solution now supports changes-only Enrollment Distributions for a wide range of carrier formats, including an Ideon standard human-readable method, so that we can connect with carriers at all stages of their technological transformation journey.

Level-Funded Quoting in Seconds

Quoting—Plan & rate data

In collaboration with Angle Health, we’re thrilled to unveil our latest quoting enhancement: offering synchronous underwritten level-funded quotes that can be delivered in 1-2 minutes—a game-changer for quoting that significantly transforms the industry standard.

With minimal group information required, our solution ensures a seamless integration process, enabling brokers to obtain firm small group level-funded quotes alongside fully-insured plans. Built with scalability, our platform aligns with existing workflows and provides customizable solutions to meet carriers’ specific requirements. As we embark on this journey, our focus remains on scaling partnerships and empowering BenTechs to capitalize on this transformative opportunity.

Real-time Quotes Direct from UHC’s New API

Quoting—Plan & rate data

Over the past year, we’ve been working with UHC to streamline quoting processes across all nodes on our platform while minimizing development requirements. Our collaboration with them marks a significant milestone as we migrate medical, dental and vision activities to new UHC APIs. These enhancements satisfy UHC’s new quoting requirements effective for January 1, 2025 rates and beyond, which typically begin around September or October.

With an emphasis on improving carrier visibility and providing faster, more accurate quotes, our platform exposes real-time rates sourced from carriers during the quoting process. This allows us to deliver near 100% accuracy and quote identifiers to facilitate triage and sold case processes.

Provider NPI Mapping for Improved Network Quality

Provider Network Data

In an effort to continue delivering the most accurate, best-in-class provider network data, we’ve addressed a major challenge in mapping indirectly-sourced data without National Provider Identifiers (NPIs). Our focus on provider mapping has resulted in significant improvements, with up to 90% increases in providers mapped across various networks. This translates to over 1.5 million additional associations between networks and their providers, enriching our dataset and improving user experiences. These enhancements directly benefit users by increasing the likelihood of finding the right provider within their network, ultimately reducing support issues.

December 2023

Dependent-Level Rates & Members Quoted

Quoting—Plan & rate data

This summer, we announced updates to Ideon’s quoting endpoints which enable users to deliver even more transparency to quoted groups. The Group Member Management endpoint returns unique identifiers for each dependent in the group, and the Display Member Rates endpoint returns an array of dependent_premiums, which references the unique dependent identifiers and their associated premiums. We also updated our display rates endpoint so that users can now retrieve information on the total number of members within a group and the number of members quoted.

Standardization of Group and Hospital Affiliations

Quoting—Network data

We improved the shop-by-doc experience by adding two new elements – Group Affiliations and Hospital Affiliations.

With these additional data, shop-by-doc applications will be able to provide more guidance to users navigating healthcare recommendations and provider decisions. Group and hospital affiliation data elements will be provided for each provider by network where applicable, accessible through our bulk network data and API. For more information on the changes, please check out our providers API documentation.

Medicare Advantage Benefit Expansion

Quoting—Plan & rate data

Earlier this year, we updated our Medicare Advantage benefit data by adding comprehensive allowance and limitation information to our data sets, processed in our context-free grammar. In addition, 9 new benefits such as acupuncture, home safety devices and modifications, and others were also added.

November 2023

Enhancement to Ideon Dashboard: Discrepancies

Enrollment

This summer marked the launch of the Ideon Dashboard, giving our customers enhanced visibility into enrollment data and streamlined issue resolution. Now, we’re elevating your data visibility experience by releasing an exciting dashboard feature: Enrollment Discrepancies.

This feature offers real-time access to data discrepancies between carrier and platform systems, including clear insight into exactly which information differs. You’ll have more data on demand, and the most straightforward resolution pathway possible.

For a quick guide on how to navigate this new feature, watch this two-minute video walkthrough by our VP of Product, Jashan Ahuja.

October 2023

Angle Health Level Funded Core Integration

Quoting—Plan & rate data

In the coming days, we’ll be going live with an integration to Angle Health’s API to quote their Level Funded products. Angle is able to provide underwritten rates within seconds to minutes, something unique in the market. Through Ideon, these can be quoted alongside our comprehensive set of employer-sponsored plans via the same quoting endpoints. Only small additions to integrations with Ideon’s API are required. For more information on how to quote, please reach out to your account manager.

September 2023

Ideon & Delta Dental

Quoting—Plan & rate data

We’re excited to announce our new ancillary carrier partnership with Delta Dental. As part of this partnership, Delta Dental will be providing their plan and rate data for their state-leading small business program. For additional information on our new carrier partnerships, please visit Planwatch.

OEP Preparedness for BenAdmin platforms

Quoting—Plan & rate data

As we approach the open enrollment period, our Customer Success Manager, Kevin Montgomery, has shared some valuable insights to help you navigate OEP 2024 with ease. In this 3-minute video, he covers:

  • 2024 plan data is available
  • New lines of coverage now displayed in Planwatch
  • An overview of our Customer Portal and expanding Knowledge Base

July 2023

Planwatch: Ancillary Plan Availability 

Quoting—Plan & rate data

With year 2024 preparations underway, we’re pleased to announce that ancillary lines of coverage will be available in Ideon’s Planwatch. Starting August 1st, readiness for Dental, Vision, Life, Disability, Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity quoting will be shown for each carrier. Additionally, enhancements have been completed to display estimated release dates for plans embargoed or undergoing testing by carriers.

Ideon’s Planwatch can be accessed here. Data will be refreshed every 10 minutes.

Beam Ancillary Rating API Integration

Quoting—Plan & rate data

We have successfully launched our integration with Beam’s Ancillary Rating API, offering coverage for Dental, Vision, Life, Accident, and Hospital Indemnity plans. Next, we work towards integrating Critical Illness coverage. Through this direct API integration, Beam can now provide its competitive rates, taking into account employer and employee attributes. Additionally, plan and quote identifiers unique to Beam are returned in this new process and can be used to expedite the case installation process.

June 2023

COMING SOON – The Ideon Dashboard

Enrollment

In the coming months, we’re excited to release a new feature for our enrollment customers: the Ideon Dashboard, an interface built for improved visibility and efficient issue resolution. This innovative dashboard is designed to seamlessly complement Ideon’s suite of API endpoints, enhancing your ability to monitor group implementation status and submit, track, and resolve issues with unparalleled efficiency. You’ll get real-time status updates for groups in the queue and stay informed about the progress of your enrollment data.

Talk to your Ideon account representative to learn more, and check out a short teaser here.

Custom Webhook URLs

Enrollment

Quick refresher, in case you’re not familiar with them: Webhooks work like push notifications, allowing for more real-time updates about important changes in our system, like Qualifying Life Events, coverage period status, or enrollment discrepancies. We’ve recently enhanced our webhook suite so you can now add and manage customizable webhook URLs, providing additional flexibility with your internal systems and new security enhancements.

May 2023

Dependent-Level Rates & Members Quoted

Quoting—Plan & rate data

We are happy to announce a couple of updates to Ideon’s quoting endpoints which enable users to deliver even more transparency to quoted groups.

First, we have enhanced our display member-rates endpoint so you can now obtain a comprehensive breakdown of rates for each dependent in a group, in addition to its members.

Second, we have updated our display rates endpoint so that users can now retrieve information on the total number of members within a group and the number of members quoted.

  • The Display Rates endpoint has two additions. First, in the meta object, total_members is added to show the count of members in the group at the time of quoting. Second, each quoted plan will have the count of members_quoted included.


Standardization of Group and Hospital Affiliations

Decision support—Provider-network data

At Ideon, we are continually seeking new ways to enhance our industry-leading provider-network dataset. To further enable shop-by-doc experiences, we identified two elements for enhancement through standardizing data:

  • Group Affiliations
  • Hospital Affiliations

By utilizing these data, shop-by-doc applications will be able to provide more guidance as their users navigate healthcare recommendations and make informed decisions in choosing a provider.

Group and hospital affiliation data elements will be provided for each provider by network where applicable, accessible through our bulk network data and API by the end of May. For more information on the changes, please check out our providers API documentation.

FHIR Data Ingestion Advancements

Decision support—Provider-network data

In 2021, CMS established new interoperability mandates for health plans. The CMS Patient Access Rule is designed to make provide- network information more easily available to patients by implementing HL7 FHIR® APIs.

We are excited to announce that we expanded our FHIR data ingestion capabilities for carriers seeking to connect with us, maximizing partnership opportunities to supply more direct data for our API users.

April 2023

Full LDEx Capabilities

Enrollment

Ideon is a core member of the LIMRA Data Exchange Standards Committee and has fully implemented the LDEx Benefits Enrollment Management (BEM) Standard as well as the LDEx Response (RSP) format. Additionally Ideon serves on the LIMRA sub-committee focused on developing the transactional API model for benefit data in the LDEx format.

Whether you’re a carrier or benefits platform, reach out to your account rep to learn more about Ideon’s LDEx capabilities.

Coverage Transmissions

Enrollment

Ideon provides full visibility into data that tech platforms have transmitted to carriers via Ideon, whether sent through API or file format. This coverage transmission data can be pulled directly from our API endpoints and includes complete transmission history by group or a specific member. Platforms can expose coverage transmissions to end users to provide greater transparency, and can use the information for reporting and auditing purposes.

March 2023

Medicare Advantage Benefit Expansion

Quoting—Plan & rate data

One of our goals at Ideon is to help people understand the value of their insurance coverage. This goal is achieved by continuously maintaining our comprehensive data sets across all market segments and lines of coverage. This month, we’re happy to announce updates to our Medicare Advantage benefit data.

First, we added comprehensive allowance and limitation information to our benefits sets, processed in our context-free grammar. Second, we added 9 new benefits that have become increasingly common in plans over recent years:

  • Acupuncture
  • Home Safety Devices and Modifications
  • In-Home Support Services
  • Meals
  • Over the Counter
  • Personal Emergency Response System
  • Remote Access Technology
  • Telehealth
  • Worldwide Emergency

With these updates, users of our Medicare Advantage data are all the more empowered to help individuals make better informed decisions when choosing a Medicare Advantage plan. If your platform is not currently utilizing our Medicare Advantage data for quoting or if you’re interested in learning how our industry-leading provider-network data can power shop-by-doc applications, please reach out to your Ideon sales representative or email us at sales@ideonapi.com.

January 2023

Ancillary quoting via carriers’ APIs

Quoting—Plan & rate data

To kick off 2023, we are building the infrastructure to support rating through carriers’ quoting APIs. The goal is to aggregate them into our industry-leading, multi-carrier Group Rating API to provide the most accurate, competitive rates for API-to-API ancillary quoting, and at the same time meet the trend of carriers building their own rating APIs.

Over the coming quarters, we’ll be progressively adding carrier APIs to rate plans, while continuing to rate through our own engine for the rest. This will be available in a new version of our quoting endpoint; no short term action is required to continue quoting ancillary plan inventory with current integrations. More technical details to follow in the upcoming months.

Provider Network Data Analyzer

Decision support—Provider-network data

Accuracy in health plan provider directories is essential in ensuring that consumers make the right decisions on their care, but provider network data sets are vast and difficult to maintain. This month, we are launching our Provider Network Data Analyzer tool, which generates a predictive score for each provider address to provide back to carriers a level of confidence for the accuracy of their data.

Using the model’s output, we want to empower our carrier partners to better manage and maintain quality data within their provider networks. This will ultimately provide more accurate data to power InsurTech platforms, and an enhanced member experience for users of InsurTech’s online apps and decision support tools.