You need to further de-normalize your tables. You're still looking at from the normalized point of view.

1. Fact table will have - > relationships to dimensional tables..meaning inorder for you to reach a certain "emp_id" in the DIM_employee from Fact_payments, you can transcend through other dimensions as well. You can create this by Creating a Factless_facttable.

For example,
2) DimEmployee (DimEmployee Many to One ->DimClaim)

  Create a table called Factless_emp_claim with three columns
   F_emp_claimID PK
   empID FK----to employee table
   ClaimID FK---to claims table

In this table you just store every possible combinations of emp and claim ID's that exist in your rdbms

You can use this "Factless" fact table as a  bridge for your Facttable  to reach both dimensional tables.

There's not a single theory in DW world that solves all the isssues. You just have to know about them and use it occordingly to come up with the best solution for your application.

Also, I suggest you Read about  "dimensional modelling for business intelligence applications". There are many white papers you can just google it.Also thories about Ralph Kimbal and  Bill Inmon.


hth