2009 Year in Review
The past year has brought about dramatic economic changes that have affected everyone from Wall Street to Main Street. While it has been a challenging time, CorVel continues to make progress in its strategic business initiatives. CorVel's strategy of owning its proprietary assets and conservative fiscal management has proven to be advantageous. In Fiscal 2009, we continued to build upon the Company's successful managed care foundation; improving our customer's savings, growing our directed care networks and continuing the expansion of our new claims management solutions. We are proud of what has been accomplished and look forward to continued progress this year.
Claim volume and cost trends have continued to move in opposite directions. The volume of Workers' Compensation claims has continued to decline to historic lows, while associated medical and indemnity costs continued to increase to record highs. The economic downturn suggests that claim volumes will continue to have downward pressure, however, changes in the economy have historically not offset cost increases and healthcare inflation. As the industry and marketplace continue to evolve, CorVel remains committed to the vision of realizing a significantly more efficient process across the disability management continuum.
CorVel has developed a unique approach to claims management, one that capitalizes on our technology foundation to help payors reduce these escalating costs. In the past, through the utilization of technological developments and workflow automation, CorVel successfully changed its approach to medical bill review processing. These changes lead to dramatic gains in quality and overall performance. By employing those tools again, we are delivering a new and innovative solution to claims management. By bringing together all of the information needed to ensure that an injured worker receives the right care at the right time, we believe that our approach can positively impact the ever continuing rise in Workers' Compensation claims costs. Through our acquisitions, infrastructure enhancements and software development, we have made significant progress this past year.
Regulatory change continues to be introduced in to the market place. This past year, the Federal government has introduced legislation that will require regulatory reporting compliance to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. This legislation has created a significant impact within our industry as compliance for a large number of our customers will be required. At a state level, legislation continues to move healthcare towards e-commerce such as mandated electronic billing between payors and providers. Acting as an Agent on behalf of our customers in both instances, CorVel is actively involved in electronic records transmission services with the government and our clients. As we think about the future, we expect to see a continued move toward the automation of the healthcare transaction, and our goal is to be on the forefront of this movement.
In closing, we would like to say thank you to our customers and our associates. It is our pleasure to have the opportunity to partner with our customers to deliver cost savings programs in this difficult economic time. We are excited by the prospects for our future and committed to the ongoing investments necessary to ongoing innovation. We look forward to the challenges and opportunities of the coming year and the continued execution of our strategy.
