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CENTERFOLD
A Healthy Network Speeds Blue Cross Services
It may take some time to load in your browser! It should take less time to downoad than the gif! Blue Cross of California is a medical insurance organization that uses its traditional SNA mainframe systems as a stepping stone to contemporary client/server, network-based computing availability and quality of service. A new 90-site dental network to be implemented next year has spurred router evaluation and a search for cost-effective and manageable hub technology. NetBIOS is the dental network protocol. The dental LAN is in beta testing, yet three active sites (headquarters and two new remote locations) are connected across a frame relay. This Blue Cross system enables hospital payments, eligibility checks and electronic batch submission of claim forms across an SNA network that connects 3,270 users at 640 remote sites. IMS is used for claim tracking, and 500 dial-up sites exist at related health organizations. An IBM 3745 front-end communications processor allows access between the mainframe host, LANs and WANs. Blue Cross of California has a series of vendor-specific network management platforms and plans to integrate management. The local and wide area networks connect 2,500 nodes and 40 NetWare serv ers. NetWare 4 and Windows NT 3.51 are being evaluated as next year's replacement for the current NetWare 3.12 operating system. Network switching will reduce the number of PCs per token ring to ensure increased throughput and availability. Blue Cross will install new file servers with error-correcting memory capability and RAID technology for the drives. Blue Cross has PictureTel System 4000 Model 200 videoconferencing in seven remote offices over ISDN Basic Rate lines. The corporate e-mail system is TAO from Fischer International, which provides mainframe access to users on the SNA network and the LANs. Dun & Bradstreet's SmartStream, BudgetStream and WorkBench streamline financial operations and actuarial tasks. The corporate departments gather budget data and statistics using a custom Executive Information System (EIS) application. Human Resources uses ResTrack, a personnel application. Blue Cross is considering designing Web servers, to be connected through leased lines to a service provider. Customers would have direct access, while Blue Cross users would dial in. The Web server might supply data on rates, information such as a Physician Prudent Buyers' booklet about participating hospitals and doctors and advertising. Direct Internet access is not required. Will it arrive soon? "If I can help it, no," says Wayne Baker, telecommunications manager. "If firewalls were 100 percent bulletproof, maybe we'd consider Internet access. But people can hack right through them. If there's no security breach possible, it might be feasible." Today, the Blue Cross has a strong foothold in building tomorrow's network environment by testing yesterday's computing requirements.
November 1, 1995
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