Similarly CRU can recover costs incurred by NHS Hospitals and Ambulance Trusts for treatment of injuries from road traffic accidents and personal injury claims. But why is so much of the market still handling CRU notifications manually?
I should qualify that and acknowledge that some, although not all, insurers handle the first stage of the process, formal notification and submission of a CRU1form electronically. And then, the majority of the market reverts to a manual, paper based process for the remaining document exchanges. Those remaining document exchanges reflect the other stages of the CRU process, CRU4 Certificate request through to CRU102 Settlement notification and when you consider that the lifespan of an open claim can be up to two years, you can begin to appreciate the amount of paperwork, data entry, manual recording, photocopying, paper and postage costs involved. And what about the labour costs and the potential accuracy issues associated with re-keying information every time a new form is needed?
And this all goes on despite the fact that the entire end to end cycle from CRU1 to CRU102 can all be handled, swiftly and simply electronically. CRIF developed and implemented the CRU extended messaging service in 2004, working closely with the DWP to create automated messaging between the insurer and CRU and facilitate electronic data exchange for certificates and compensation information. The CRU Extended Messaging Service allows for two way electronic dialogue between CRU and the insurer and covers the end to end CRU process and the lifespan of an open claim.
The service provides front end validation, preventing the need for reworking details and a significant reduction in paper rejections from CRU. There is an instant audit trail of messages exchanged and online management reports can be generated for workflow and billing. Continually updated to reflect government legislative changes, e.g. the recent Universal Credit and the Diffuse Mesothelioma Payment Scheme changes, the service also delivers improved security, supports better data integrity and is IS0 27001 and IS0 9001 certified. Insurers save time and money with reduced manual document handling, postal distribution and document retention and benefit from faster response times from CRU.
So why has the market been slow on the uptake? It would seem the operational silos prevalent in so many insurers have been a barrier to awareness of the service and its benefits. CRIF is the only supplier in the market that offers CRU extended messaging to DWP CRU and NISSA CRU. If a personal injury claim originates in motor and the motor claims handler notifies CRU manually or via a supplier that only provides the CRU1 electronic notification; by the time that claim has been passed to the PI team, the opportunity to use extended messaging to streamline the process and save time and money can be lost.
I haven’t yet shared the additional benefits to be gained from layering CRIF’s secure web based DEA workflow service on top of CRU Extended Messaging. It minimises data entry by eliminating the need to double key the claim information, extracting the relevant claim data from the Claims Portal, to create and submit a PI claim into CACHE. But then perhaps I’ve created enough potential exasperation at this point. The great news is that CRIF’s CRU Extended Messaging and DEA-Data Entry Assistant is available now, swift and easily implemented and delivering a massive return on a minimal IT spend.
