Massive Scale, High Pressure
The Deepwater Horizon Economic Claims Center (DHECC) is the largest class-action settlement in U.S. history and the largest claims program of any type by dollars (not including tobacco settlements which are not claims/case-based). It is also, by several metrics, the largest claims and case management implementation ever performed.
The Information Technology systems used by DHECC had to encompass a dozen major claim types, each with multiple sub-types and each with rules about every aspect of the claims process. The settlement document that was the basis on the settlement and was the primary source document to build the claims technology systems weighed in at over 1,000 pages and that was before the nearly one-thousand amendments and clarifications to it done over 6 years, virtually all of which have an impact on claims processing and therefore I.T.
The systems involved require intense amounts of flexibility and change because of the many back and forth interpretations and policy changes. All of which fell under the requirement (called Rule 6) that all cases that are similar, meaning the same claim types, had to be adjudicated on the same basis.
State Systems Integration
When more than $13 billion and hundreds of thousands of claimants are involved the States involved have an interest to make sure that any monies owed to them by citizens receiving payments are tracked and paid. In addition, many of the Claims adjudications required integration to get information such as parcel ownership, land leases, fishing licenses and other State-held data points.
This meant that the Carrollton team had to work with the Parties, many different vendors and, most importantly, all of the Gulf States’ Government IT groups to plan out and execute data sharing arrangements. This included handling MOUs and working through security protocols through all six States included in the settlement.
Security and Anti-fraud
Imagine the scariest documents an organization could find itself responsible for. Tax returns, Drivers licenses, social security cards, deeds to property, bank account information, customer and vendor lists, EBITA calculations. DHECC is responsible for millions of these and has lost none of them to fraud.
Utilizing Pega for the case management system and SAS for anti-fraud, every claim and claimant is screened by background checks and security analysis. This system allows claims managers, fwa analysts and processors to validate ownership of data, identity and status as a claimant throughout the lifecycle of the claim.
