The combination is aimed at serving ACO market
BOSTON – In a deal that aims to create a technology company focused on providing real-time data to doctors from both medical records and private payers, Lumeris and payers Highmark Inc., Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey and Independence Blue Cross announced they will acquire NaviNet for an undisclosed price.
According to the companies involved in the acquisition, joining the strength of NaviNet's healthcare communication network – used by more than 75 percent of the country's physicians nationwide – with Lumeris' suite of services that provide real-time health and claims data, will allow for the delivery of data and applications needed to drive accountable, value-based healthcare.
"One of the complaints about NaviNet was that doctors needed to leave their EMR or practice management system in order to do transactions on NaviNet and then cut and paste it to bring it into their system," said Brad Waugh, NaviNet CEO.
Using the Lumeris platform eliminates that complaint and also moves NaviNet from the practice administrator's desk into the doctor's office.
According to Joel Andersen, chief marketing officer with Lumeris, combining NaviNet's administrative platform and its direct link to health plans with the Lumeris accountable delivery platform will allow payers and providers to drive broader adoption of accountable care.
"Until now, doctors have only had information from within their four walls either in a paper chart or an EMR, but they haven't had information from across the continuum of care," said Andersen. "What we saw with NaviNet is a pervasive solution in millions of doctors' offices across the country and our ability to take them to the next level by building on their administrative transaction with clinical transactions from across the continuum of care."
For Waugh, the combination was just what the doctor ordered. He noted that NaviNet's management and its investors had identified its need to broaden the company's scope to serve the move toward shared savings models.
"With Lumeris, they have spent the past five years building this capability for accountable delivery," noted Waugh. "If we were to build this out ourselves, given the amount of time it would take, we would miss the market opportunity."
At the heart of the combination, the companies see the ability for doctors to have for the first time real-time data that combines both medical information in the doctor's office with claims data - all the information needed to provide for effective care coordination and population health management.
According to Steve Udvarhelyi, executive vice president with Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross, the new NaviNet solution will be based on open platform architecture.
"This needs to be an all-payer solution," said Udvarhelyi. "Like we saw with administrative transactions, what we want to have happen here is for physicians and hospitals to integrate this in the way they care for patients and the way they run their offices.
"This is more than just the sharing of data. You also need to have the technology that turns the data into actionable information and that functionality doesn't exist today. EMRs don't have the integration capabilities and the ability to blend the data together from multiple different sources and this solution does," concluded Udvarhelyi.