Two large acquisitions and a retooled EMR/PM product geared toward community health centers have made for a busy month for Ingenix.
The Eden Prairie, Minn.-based healthcare IT and services company signaled its push into other areas of the hospital setting with the July 22 announcement that it will acquire Picis, Inc., a Wakefield, Mass.-based provider of health information systems for high-acuity areas of hospitals, including the emergency department, surgical suites and intensive care units. Two weeks later, Ingenix announced the acquisition of Executive Health Resources, a Newtown Square, Pa.-based provider of medical necessity compliance and physician medical management solutions for hospitals.
The two deals highlight a recent trend in healthcare: The integration of IT vendors and payers. Ingenix is a wholly owned subsidiary of the UnitedHealth Group, and its alliances with Picis and Executive Health Resources are designed to help hospitals further link their electronic medical records with data generated by health plans – a move that not only aids in clinical decisions, but helps hospitals better determine who’s paying for which portion of the bill.
With the Executive Health Resources deal, Ingenix officials say they’re looking to help hospitals improve their dealings with patients covered by government-sponsored health plans. Congress is placing more emphasis of late on audits of medical services provided to Medicare and Medicaid patients to reduce federal payment discrepancies to hospitals.
“The regulatory landscape is complex and ever-changing, and compliance has become a crucial aspect of a hospital’s operational integrity,” said Robert Corrato, president and CEO of Executive Health Resources. “As we continue to support our clients in this rapidly growing market with solutions that simplify the compliance process, Ingenix’s impressive data assets and sophisticated technologies will help us to more quickly deliver critical, technology-enabled intelligence for our clients.”
The Picis deal, meanwhile, is designed to strengthen Ingenix’s footprint in the hospital setting. Picis gathers and manages clinical, financial and administrative data from high-acuity areas of more than 1,800 medical centers, hospitals and integrated delivery networks in 19 countries throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
“Ingenix and Picis share a commitment to improving healthcare and delivering results through the ‘health intelligence’ generated by information technology,” said Todd Cozzens, Picis’ CEO and vice chairman. “For today’s hospitals, the automation, optimization and transformation of high-acuity care is critical to helping achieve compliance with meaningful use rules. Picis has the solutions that will help our clients drive even greater positive change for their patients, their businesses and health systems overall. We will accelerate this transformation together with Ingenix.”
“This marriage of ‘health intelligence’ and clinical workflow will provide substantial value to patients, physicians and hospitals,” added Andy Slavitt, chief executive officer of Ingenix. “Tremendous opportunities exist to use information and technology to modernize the high-acuity area, delivering better care and greater efficiency to these high-volume areas of the hospital, where resource consumption is often at its greatest. Working with Picis’ world-class senior leadership team and talented employees, we believe we can make meaningful change in this critical segment of healthcare.”
Following those two deals, Ingenix announced the release of a special version of its CareTracker practice management and electronic health record product. Geared specifically toward federally qualified community health centers, the solution offers health centers data collection and reporting modules for compliance with legislative mandates, support in other languages (Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese), sliding-fee calculators for help with co-pays and out-of-pocket obligations at check-in, and eligibility verification tools to help centers steer patients to the right health plan or payment schedule.
“Ingenix is making it easier for Community Health Centers – organizations that provide medical care to many of the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable people – to access and use advanced health information technology systems to enhance patient services and eliminate disparities in care,” said Steven Tolle, the company’s senior vice president of physician solutions. “Ingenix CareTracker delivers tools and technologies that will help community health centers get more from limited financial resources, help ensure compliance with state and federal regulations and reduce administrative complexity, so they can focus on caring for patients. The system makes it easier to connect with hospitals, labs and health plans, expediting access to clinical and patient information that can support better health outcomes.”