Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Improves Communications to Hospitals and Doctors by Utilizing the FineGround Condenser Suite

SAN DIEGO, HIMSS Conference, Feb. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- FineGround Networks, Inc., the leader in enterprise Web application acceleration, announced today that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) selected the FineGround Condenser(TM) Application Acceleration Software Suite. The Condenser will enhance the performance of BCBSM's web-based information system for hospitals and physicians referred to as web-DENIS. Web-DENIS allows for a secure, private network access for hospitals and doctor's offices to review patient insurance information, patient history of claims as well as current status of claims. By delivering optimized application performance, providers can capture and analyze patient data in real-time.

When health plans, hospitals, doctor's offices and patients have difficulty communicating pertinent information with one another, process inefficiencies follow. The challenge then is to provide a secure accessible solution that will reduce administrative time in the healthcare system and improve efficiency at the point of care. Streamlining tasks associated with coordinating and managing patient care, including patient record administration, health coverage eligibility and benefits, and provider relations become critical.

"Our success relies on leveraging the right technologies for processing, moving and managing health claims information," said Ed Burns, Lead Data Network Engineer, Web Strategy & Hosting at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. "We chose the FineGround software suite because we gained increased application response time, even over secure networks, without the burden of changing our existing infrastructure."

"Performance and reliability is key for customers in the healthcare market demanding on-time processing while running their business-critical networked applications," said Dixie Baker, Vice President of Sales at FineGround Networks. "This industry requires technologies that unify the patient view, improve access and availability of information resources and provide secure access to data. Our application performance solution accelerates the delivery of critical business information while addressing bandwidth, latency, and security related bottlenecks."

NOTE: If you are interested in learning more about FineGround Networks, register for an upcoming web seminar scheduled for Thursday, February 20, 2003 at 10:00am PST. Sun Microsystems and FineGround Networks will discuss "How to Improve Portal Efficiency and Boost Employee Productivity." To register go to: http://www.fineground.com/register/index.shtml

About Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, a nonprofit corporation, provides or administers health care benefits to 4.8 million members through a variety of plans: Traditional, Blue Preferred and Community Blue PPOs, Blue Choice Point of Service, and the Blue Care Network HMO. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network are nonprofit corporations and independent licensees of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. For more information, visit http://www.bcbsm.com/.

About FineGround Networks

FineGround Networks provides the only software solution that accelerates the performance of web-based applications for enterprises. Using a broad range of optimization techniques, the Condenser improves performance by intelligently eliminating redundant traffic and latency delays in the network and the application. The Condenser requires no changes to the applications, servers or network. Covisint, Factset Research, Sun Microsystems, Walgreens, Whirlpool Corporation and many more are experiencing significant performance gains. Backed by New Enterprise Associates, Worldview Technology Partners and private investors, the FineGround team is headquartered in Campbell, California. Information about FineGround Networks can be found on the Web at http://www.fineground.com/ .

FineGround Networks, Inc.

CONTACT: April Rassa, ext. 121, or arassa@fineground.com, or Deborah
Faitt-Esker, ext. 107, or deborah@fineground.com, both of FineGround Networks,
Inc., +1-408-376-0570

Web site: http://www.bcbsm.com/

Web site: http://www.fineground.com/