Programming and Instructional Design

Agency Cost Benefit Analysis for Minute Maid, Continued

The current Monthly Claim Process for Home Providers seems well thought out, well developed, and thorough, but it is time-consuming, and very manual and labor intensive – and because of the cognitive complexity of comparing data on detailed forms, subject to the occasional error.

The monthly claims process is a process well-suited to being automated – a computer or database application could easily and quickly do some of the calculations and look-ups that are now being done manually.

I possibly could design some tools that would automate portions of this process. I wouldn’t know unless I looked into this further and perhaps had copies of some claims to play with along with copies of the spreadsheets staff already use. However the big disadvantage that I see right off is that in order for the computer to do some of the calculating and checking, staff would have to enter a potentially huge amount of data from the claims. So I’m not sure there would be much of an advantage.

On the other hand, I understand that there is a well established, widely used CACFP Food Program Management Tool called Minute Menu that will capture claim data in electronic form with a minimum of effort on your part. There are two versions of this tool – the regular version which is pretty pricey, and the lite version.

If most Agency providers have computer access, and Agency staff seem to feel that they do, because they often send email, I feel that the lite version, which allows Providers to enter claim information online, so that when monthly claim time comes around, all the data entry is DONE, might be well worth a try for the Agency. I would recommend as you look at it, TO PULL IN A COUPLE OF YOUR PROVIDERS TO GET THEIR THOUGHTS AND FEEDBACK AS WELL – because the success of Minute Menu will depend on how willing your Providers are to use it.

Here is a comparison of the LITE and REGULAR versions of Minute Maid from some promotional material dated last July:

Software License and Start-Up Costs (includes license, on-site installation and training)
Monthly Software Maintenance Charge and Premium Support Plan
Usage Charges

LITE
$1,599
$150.00
$3.75 per on-line claim (for 70 Home Providers this would come to $262.50)

REGULAR
$10,000.00 (includes scanning equipment)
$83.00
$3.75 per on-line claim, cost of scannable forms for scanned claims (approx. 18 cents per sheet and 1.00 per chart)

Following is the way I would “argue” or “advocate” for Minute Menu Lite:

Use stories of other agencies’ experience. An agency up north that staff talk with at the monthly meetings cut their claim cycle down from two weeks to 1 ½ days. And they also went from 75 to 100 Providers. (Of course you’d want to get more than one agency’s feedback, but this report doesn’t surprise me. I have an IT background, and I have seen similar cuts in time and improvements in accuracy from other well-thought-out computerized systems.)

Currently it takes one staff member 7 days or 70 hours, another staff member 2 days or 16 hours, and a director approx. 2 hours to process and check the claims each month. So let’s just say that’s $1000.00 a month in salaries alone. If Minute Menu reduced the time to 15 hours for the first two staff members and half an hour for the director, let’s say that would go down to about $200.00 a month in salaries. Add to that the monthly cost of $100.00 for maintenance and support and the $262.50 usage fee charge. It would then cost the Agency $562.50 per month to do the claims. That’s a savings of around $400.00 a month. The license and start-up for the LITE version costs $1500 – so within 4 months the Agency would have paid the license and startup costs. After that they would be making around $400.00 a month.

The other benefits would be increased accuracy and a powerful recruiting tool. Agency staff say the prospect of greatly reduced paperwork may attract more home providers to the program. Staff observe that they could use the time saved for doing monitors, for training, and for recruiting, (and what about grant-writing?) The training that Providers would require to use the new system would count toward their 6 hour CACFP annual training requirements (record-keeping).

Plus Minute Menu is a total Food Program Management Package. It doesn’t just do claims, it also helps track and schedule monitors so that they are completed within the time limits.

Some caveats to all of this to consider … Does the Agency already have the computer horsepower and bandwidth that we need? Will the majority of Providers have the basic computer equipment required?

These are the rought figures. If the Agency is interested in procedding, someone would want to do a much more thorough job in figuring actual costs and benefits. It may be good to form a task force of employees and Providers to look at various aspects of what it would take to get Minute Menu Lite for the monthly CACFP Claim Process.