PHILADELPHIA – Portico Systems is placing its faith in the emerging medical home market with its recent acquisition of Ethidium Health Systems.
The Philadelphia-based developer of IT services and solutions for health plans purchased Ethidium in October and is working to integrate the company’s clinical quality and collaboration tools into its Integrated Provider Management (IPM) platform. Portico’s chief operating officer, Sam Muppala, says the integration “gives us an opportunity to exchange information in real-time.”
“Ethdium’s real-time clinical information management and exchange technology coupled with Portico’s IPM platform provide all the necessary tools to implement sophisticated medical home and pay-for-performance models,” added Ned Moore, Portico’s CEO.
The Medical Home is seen as an alternative to the hospital setting, a convergence of physicians, patients and health plans that aims to reduce critical care costs by improving collaboration. A recent study in the Annals of Family Medicine found that a medical home concept could generate savings of $67 billion annually in the United States.
“To deliver on the promise of this approach to care delivery, new health information exchange and care coordination tools will be required,” said Minalkumar Patel, MD, CEO of Care Management International, Inc.
The key, say Portico executives, lies in providing the incentives so that physicians and health plans will want to get involved.
According to Muppala, Portico’s approach establishes a real-time health information exchange that promotes cooperation between providers, patients and payers. By “ensuring that the right providers see the right patients at the right time,” he said, the platform streamlines clinical and administrative actions and helps to reduce costs.
“With Ethidium’s technology, Portico will make available the industry’s first and only end-to-end provider management platform that integrates and streamlines network, clinical and administrative processes,” said Matias Klein, Ethidium’s president and Portico’s vice president and general manager of clinical quality and collaboration.