James Moir
Hall of Fame Inductee 1996
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of Fame
James Moir, President and CEO of Maritime Medical Care Inc. of
Halifax, has provided the vision, encouragement and resources to enable
Maritime Medical Care's employees to use technology to make their company
a model of corporate efficiency.
Moir joined Maritime Medical Care, a health insurance corporation,
in 1993 as President after a career in the brokerage industry, which
included the post of Chairman and President of Midland Capital Corporation
(now Midland Walwyn Inc.). His mandate was to make Maritime Medical
Care an industry leader in customer service and marketing success. Employee
empowerment and information technology were the foundation of his plan.
Under Moir, Maritime Medical Care reinvented the way it does business.
Today the company's client-server environment permits seven-day, 24-hour
operations. Claims can be adjudicated and paid instantly, whereas many
insurance companies take two to three weeks to make payments. Pharmacists
throughout Atlantic Canada are on line to Maritime Medical's workstations.
The company processes 99 per cent of group drug claims electronically,
more than any other Canadian health insurance provider, and more than
70 per cent of its remaining business is conducted with no human intervention.
In the three years since Moir's appointment, Maritime Medical Care's
revenue and equity have climbed by more than 50 percent.
Innovations led by Moir are having an impact beyond the company. Maritime
Medical Care is part of a consortium that won a contract to build a
$4-million medicare processing system for the Nova Scotia Department
of Health. The system will put all physicians in the province on line
to a central information source, which will also be used for government
audits of medicare expenses. Maritime Medical Care is developing the
same technology for the pharmaceutical profession and other health care
providers, enabling Nova Scotia to be at the leading edge of health
care information processing in Canada.
Moir's philosophy is that investments in technology cannot be separated
from investments in human capital. "Despite the rhetoric relative to
the supposedly infinite range of technological possibilities," he says,
"it will always be people who provide creativity and act as the navigators
for your success."
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