Harnessing data to help people live healthier lives

Bupa UK Insurance uses SAS analytics to help deliver excellent, affordable health care and prevent insurance fraud

With the goal of helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives, Bupa has grown from humble beginnings in the United Kingdom in 1947 into a global health care and insurance company serving more than 50 million customers. Bupa is now among the world’s leading providers of health care solutions, including disease prevention, social care, and hospital and clinic services. In the UK alone, Bupa now supports 3.8 million health insurance customers.

On a mission to be the world’s most customer-centric health care company, Bupa is always looking for ways to improve its services and deliver even greater value to its customers. However, ensuring that millions of people always receive fast, cost-effective and timely care is an incredibly complex task involving vast volumes of data and a team of more than 50 dedicated data analysts.

“Every day we work to understand what services we need to deliver, where we should provide them and to which members – all while making sure that the patient journey is as pleasant and convenient as possible,” says Peter Woods, Head of Data Operations at Bupa UK Insurance. “On the business side of our operations, we monitor the cost of services to support financial planning. We also continuously monitor patient outcomes and use those insights to drive improvements to our services.”

Data from across the business – from drug pricing information to hospital performance scores and workforce metrics – enables the Analytics and Data team to enhance those vital activities. But the team is responsible for more than just crunching data – it also works tirelessly to detect and prevent fraud and money laundering. To carry out these mission-critical responsibilities effectively, they need a robust and flexible analytics platform. That’s why Bupa UK Insurance relies on SAS.

Staying ahead of the curve

For more than 20 years, Bupa UK Insurance has driven its core data analytics processes – from anti-money laundering activities to financial planning and performance monitoring – using SAS analytics. During this time, the Analytics and Data team developed a broad range of models and dashboards to track key operational metrics.

“We use SAS because it is the industry standard for data analysis,” Woods says. “The fact that SAS evolves with our industry has really helped us to stay ahead of the curve.”

To allocate resources efficiently across its analytics environment, Bupa UK Insurance uses SAS Grid Manager to help balance workloads, optimize performance and support multiprocessing. Additionally, SAS technicians and consultants worked closely with the company throughout its analytics journey to support the creation of new solutions and capabilities.

“Working with SAS is very easy,” Woods continues. “We connect regularly with our SAS technical support contact to share ideas and explore new ways to enhance our platform. In fact, we have on occasion had more than 40 people join these calls to learn the latest tricks and tips from SAS and get their insight on any technical challenges that we might be facing.”

Ensuring care excellence with data-driven insights

With SAS driving fast, accurate and flexible data analysis across the business, Bupa UK Insurance benefits from the real-time information it needs to maintain its leading position in the health care sector.

“Using SAS gives us an edge,” Woods says. “For instance, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority’s rules stipulate that we cannot keep personalized data for longer than six years. With SAS, we can create derived data that contains no personal information but still retains important insights on all our activities. We can then use this historical data to enrich trend analysis and augment our modeling and planning activities. Having that long-term view of our business is a real plus, especially when making important strategic decisions.”

Revealing fraud and inaccurate coding

Using SAS to drive its fraud prevention strategies has also helped Bupa UK Insurance identify and prevent criminal activity.

“As an insurance company, we know that we will always face fraudulent claims,” Woods says. “The detailed insight that SAS provides helps us to clamp down on potential criminal behavior, such as inappropriate billing or incorrect coding, and help law enforcement fight organized crime.”

What’s next

In the coming months, Bupa UK Insurance is planning to expand its SAS environment by implementing SAS Viya to accelerate analytics performance and SAS Viya Workbench to give analysts a creative platform to experiment with new models and capabilities.

“Twenty years into our relationship with SAS, and there are still so many avenues open to us to enhance our analytics capabilities,” Woods concludes. “We look forward to continuing our close partnership with SAS, helping us put our business data to work and deliver excellent care to all our customers.”