Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie Versailles

Industry

Healthcare

Challenge

Reduce storage costs and assure traceability throughout the archiving process

Solution

Document management system and online portal, enabling papers to be securely transported, stored, located and retrieved

Value

• Helped recover €1.6 million of fraudulent payments
• Optimised archiving costs, security, scalability and traceability
• Reduced complexity and simplified regulatory compliance

Extensive network

One of the top health insurance funds in France, Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie (CPAM) Versailles provides support for sickness, maternity, chronic illness, occupational health and workplace injuries.

With a large network of healthcare professionals and local branches, each specialising in areas such as pharmacy or dentistry, it also monitors healthcare expenses and promotes disease prevention programmes.

"The archiving programme we’ve put in place is a formidable weapon in the fight against fraud. It has enabled our department to recover more than €1.6 million."

Jean-Jacques Larcher, Warehousing and Transport Division Manager, CPAM Versailles

Improving traceability and efficiency

These operations generate huge volumes of documents with payment centres handling more than 27 million itemised statements every year. Traceability is super-critical. Paperwork for payments and claims become legal documents in the event of court disputes and must be easily located to avoid the risk of criminal liability.

Fabrice Hénault, Archive Manager at CPAM Versailles, explains: “Document management was a real challenge. Administration was highly complex as paper archives, forms, and storage units had to be managed simultaneously. Sometimes we would spend hours looking for files.”

Complete solution

CPAM Versailles looked at various options before eventually selecting Iron Mountain®. The solution brings numerous advantages, including access to highly secure Iron Mountain storage centres and document management experts – allowing CPAM Versailles to optimise costs, protection, scalability and traceability.

The archiving system was redesigned to include an online XARC document management portal, enabling virtualisation of the entire process, from indexing to destruction, regardless of archive location.

Fabrice Hénault adds: “The system is very flexible and allows us to increase or decrease the size of our archives. Now, our staff cannot do without it.”

Under French law, paper documents must be kept for 33 months for reimbursement requests and five years in the event of disputes. Iron Mountain helped implement a new filing plan, listing documents by destruction date.

Archive boxes are normally kept in branches for an initial period of six months, followed by six months in the CPAM Versailles warehouse, before being transported to an Iron Mountain secure storage centre.

"The system is very flexible and allows us to increase or decrease the size of our archives. Now, our staff cannot do without it."

Fabrice Hénault, Archive Manager, CPAM Versailles

Stringent processes and service levels

Branches use the XARC portal to index the archives, generate barcodes, and issue removal requests. These checkpoints extend throughout each stage of the transportation process. Barcodes are printed on every box and pallet, identifying their precise location – in a branch, in the warehouse, or at the Iron Mountain storage site.

“The application provides immediate traceability throughout,” says Jean-Jacques Larcher, Warehousing and Transport Division Manager at CPAM Versailles. “The Iron Mountain solution ensures documents are not lost and keeps a record of all exchanges. We can also rest assured that our records are stored in good conditions with optimal security.”

Urgent documents are retrieved within 24 hours and non-urgent documents within 48 hours. This may be extended up to 15 days for very large volume retrievals.

Reducing fraudulent claims

As well as authorising users with different levels of access to information, the XARC system also issues an alert when an archive comes to the end of its lifecycle. CPAM Versailles may then authorise Iron Mountain to destroy the documents securely or request continued storage and retrieval facilities if fraud has been suspected.

Jean-Jacques Larcher concludes: “The archiving programme we’ve put in place is a formidable weapon in the fight against fraud. It has enabled our department to recover more than €1.6 million. This would not have been possible without an effective document management system.”