Over the past twenty years, IPRO has grown from a fledgling physicians' organization working in a couple of counties in downstate New York, to a nationally recognized firm of nearly 400 employees, operating in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
While retaining our core Medicare improvement and Medicaid evaluation contracts in New York - where it all began - IPRO now offers a range of services nationwide that include independent review of managed care appeals on behalf of state governments, auditing health plan performance for public and private payers, encounter data validation work, as well as support for Medicaid quality improvement oversight in New York, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. We are on the front lines of innovation; we evaluate the performance of hospital-based AIDS treatment centers, we monitor New York's burgeoning Early Intervention program for children in need of services and we conduct the nation's first systematic, state-based review of hospital compliance with resident work hour requirements for physicians-in-training.
We are proud of our corporate commitment to improving what we do for our customers. This commitment is more than a collection of high-sounding words and phrases; the collaborator and customer surveys we conduct each year demonstrate high levels of satisfaction, while the surveys our employees fill out anonymously each year position us as industry leaders, when measured against our peers. We worked hard to achieve and then renew our ISO 9001:2000 certification, a customer-centered approach to demonstrating continuous improvement that only a relative handful of health organizations has yet achieved. Our external appeals review program was among the first to be accredited by the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission and our award-winning family of corporate Web sites now attracts upwards of 750,000 visitors a year.
As we celebrate two decades of growth and innovation, it's worth remembering that organizations rise and fall on the basis of the commitment of their employees. At IPRO we are blessed with a workforce of physicians, nurses, improvement coordinators, analysts, programmers, policy experts and support professionals that is second to none. And that has made (and continues to make) all the difference in the world.