Summary
Highmark Inc. is a national, diversified health care partner serving over 5 million members across the United States through its businesses in health insurance, dental insurance, vision care, and reinsurance. Prior to engaging Zasio Enterprises, Highmark did not have a formal records management program. Records were being managed from one department to another and in most instances, everything was being retained permanently, including email. Even when not required by a specific regulation, both the paper and electronic versions of the same record were retained. A listing of record series and their retention periods existed for offsite storage, however, destruction was never authorized. Needless to say, this made recordkeeping very costly and a risk-nightmare.
To establish a records management strategy that would ensure all its records were managed in accordance with business, legal, and regulatory requirements, Highmark Inc. partnered with Zasio Enterprises to implement Versatile Retention™, Zasio’s robust retention schedule management and research solution.
Objectives
Highmark needed a tool that could:
- Implement an enterprise-wide records management program complete with governing policies
- Create a records retention schedule
- Design an all-employee records management training course
- Provide direction in procuring an electronic records management solution
Implementing Versatile Retention
Zasio consultants conducted extensive interviews across the enterprise to tailor Zasio’s scalable retention management solution, Versatile Retention, that would remedy the issues and best fit Highmark’s diverse business needs. They met with Highmark’s high-level stakeholders, as well as departmental subject matter experts. These information-gathering sessions enabled Zasio to develop the following solutions:
- A corporate records management policy applicable to all formats of records
- A process-based retention schedule that applied business, legal, and regulatory retention requirements
- A uniform retention period for all email
- A training course that was added to mandatory corporate training for all employees, including new hires
- Unbiased and impartial assistance with creating an RFP for an automated electronic records management solution
- A top-to-bottom records management program complete with policies, processes, and roles necessary to manage the program independently
Results
Through Zasio’ s guidance, Highmark successfully procured and implemented Versatile Retention that effectively applies Highmark’s retention schedule, manages legal holds, and issues disposition for over 2 billion structured and unstructured electronic records.
Highmark was more than pleased with the Zasio partnership and implementation of Versatile Retention, as positive results were immediate:
- The new retention schedule consisted of 373 consolidated record series, compared to the over 4000 record series reported to offsite storage
- Offsite paper destruction was implemented, reducing the inventory by 67%
- A 3-year uniform retention period for all email was adopted; over 100 terabytes were deleted, saving $433,000 in yearly storage costs
- 100% of the employees participated in records management training and they all passed a required test assessment