Case Study: Highmark achieves a unified enterprise data warehouse and faster fraud detection with Teradata

An Enterprise Data Warehouse Solution from Teradata Creates a Unified Foundation for Competitive Success at Highmark

Highmark Inc., an $8.1 billion non‑profit health insurer serving 4.4 million members, was hampered by fragmented claims data spread across three separate warehouses (ACE, HIW and HFDR). That structure produced redundant and sometimes conflicting results, left analysis working with data 30–60 days old, and limited the company’s ability to detect fraud, manage costs, and deliver proactive care across 400,000 daily claims and 36,000 calls.

Highmark implemented the Medical Experience Subject Area (MESA), a phased enterprise data warehouse on a 12‑node Teradata platform with Informatica ETL to create a single, near‑real‑time source of claims and financial data. The new EDW dramatically sped queries (10–20x in early benchmarks; 300–700% improvement as use expanded), cut mainframe costs (from $411K to $18K/month), recovered $9M in fraud in 2003 and helped prevent more than $25M in fraudulent payments, while enabling better predictive analytics, proactive care management and profitable new products like its Medicare offering.

Highmark