To provide more personalized customer service, Goodman and his team recently implemented an alert system in Humana's call center that flags a caller's specific characteristics, giving customer care specialists an opportunity to discuss cost-saving options or benefits and services that might be helpful to the caller.

"One of our challenges is how we can continue to use IT to gain insight into what's really important to our members and then use that insight to provide a better experience and help them with their wellness efforts," Goodman says. "The opportunities for IT to leverage this are limitless and rich."

To be more proactive, Humana recently began surveying members immediately after a service call as part of its ECHO, or Every Customer Has Opportunity, program. To date, Humana has surveyed about 50,000 members a month to determine their satisfaction levels with the carrier. Dissatisfied members receive a call from a customer care specialist, who tries to determine the root cause of the problem and then fix it. "This is a very helpful feedback loop and is driving a lot of our initiatives," Goodman says.

Goodman and his team are working to expand the geographical reach of Availity, Humana's primary gateway for the submission of claims and encounters. The portal allows physicians to log on to one common interface to access claims information. It debuted in Florida in 2004 through a joint venture with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida (Jacksonville). With Availity, Humana currently is working with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas to add physician groups in Texas.

"Physicians don't want to have to log on to 20 different payor Web sites and train their people how to navigate these sites," Goodman says. "Availity takes the hassle out of that process and can lower costs for participants."

Goodman and his IT team also are leveraging Humana's and Availity's real-time capabilities to expand services to providers, including real-time claims adjudication and the Availity Care Profile. With patients' permission, Humana can use claims data to provide physicians with a Care Profile that provides more information about their patients, such as which prescriptions have been filled or what lab tests have been conducted.

Goodman's efforts to improve Humana's customer service through innovative IT projects have not gone unnoticed. He was named to CIO magazine's CIO 100 in 2003 and Computerworld's Premier 100 in 2004. Goodman attributes such accolades to his strong IT team and his ability to align IT with the business.

Although he has been in insurance IT his entire career, Goodman initially intended to pursue engineering. He earned a bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering from New York University and was working on his PhD in solid-state physics when he began working in the IT department at MetLife to earn a living. "It turned out working with computers in large insurance companies was a lot of a fun and a big challenge, and before I knew it, I was at MetLife for 23 years," he says.

"As IT becomes more pervasive throughout an organization, it makes sense to combine these operations to balance the investments made," he indicates. "This is the most exciting, rewarding career opportunity I've had. Not only is it something that can help shareholders, but if you do this right, you can help people."

Sharon Baker is a freelance business writer based in Charlotte, N.C.