Jewish Home Lifecare, one of the oldest and largest nonprofit, long-term care and rehabilitation systems in New York State, has inked a deal to upgrade its revenue cycle management processes.
Emerging Health Information Technology, a Yonkers, NY-based provider of healthcare IT software and services, won the contract to provide IT services to Jewish Home Lifecare at its three campuses in the New York metropolitan area.
Jewish Home Lifecare was formerly known as The Jewish Home and Hospital Lifecare System. Emerging Health is a subsidiary of the Bronx, N.Y.-based Montefiore Medical Center.
Jewish Home Lifecare will use Emerging Health's TRansaction Exchange Knowledge-based Services, or TREKS, to perform eligibility verification, service authorization, claims scrubbing and validation, and payment analysis.
"Fast and accurate insurance verification and claims management are critical to achieving our revenue cycle objectives," said Thomas Gilmartin, chief administrative officer at Jewish Home Lifecare. "Emerging Health's technology will provide solutions that will increase operational efficiency and help us improve the service we provide our clients."
Emerging Health will assist Jewish Home in confirming Medicaid eligibility for its clients through TREKS Verify, a service that creates an electronic exchange making it possible for Jewish Home to transmit files of active patient demographics to a central hub for verification against the Medicaid Management Information System database.
The system will electronically deliver a response file back to Jewish Home with the Medicaid eligibility status for each of its patients. In April 2007, TREKS was one of the first healthcare technologies to receive CAQH CORE Phase 1 certification for adhering to industry guidelines that streamline eligibility verification and promote health plan-provider interoperability.
"We are delighted to be working with Jewish Home Lifecare to help them improve their revenue cycle, eliminate the risk of claims rejection, [and] ensure appropriate payer reimbursement," said Jack Wolf, president and chief executive officer of Emerging Health.
Jewish Home has also contracted with Emerging Health to receive, validate, store, and submit 837I (institutional) electronic claim files. TREKS technology will be used to track and reconcile 837 claims, automatically query insurance payers for status and resolution of open claims, and record adjudication information for 835 electronic advice remittance transactions.
Consultants from Emerging Health will also provide Jewish Home with quality improvement methodologies through ongoing analysis of trends in denials/errors.
The Jewish Home Lifecare network offers skilled nursing care, rehabilitation, Alzheimer's special care communities, respite care, senior housing and community programs such as home care and adult day care via an award-winning telehealth monitoring program.
Emerging Health Information Technology provides services to hospitals, long term care facilities, integrated delivery networks and large ambulatory practices. The firm also provides project management, IT resource planning, systems assessment, application development as well as application outsourcing and infrastructure management services.