Reimbursement
Four months after the switch to a new benefits administrator caused a massive claims backlog, the situation for Maryland mental health providers appears to be on the upswing. Even so, more repairs have to be made to the system before things can return to normal, state officials say.
A published report in late December highlighted the difficulties that arose when the state's mental health department replaced its old contractor, APS Healthcare, with Norfolk, Va.-based ValueOptions. A projected $5 million savings prompted the switch.
By offering its members a patient portal through clearinghouse provider Office Ally, Blue Shield of California is hoping for greater adoption of the tool.
More than half of BSC's IPA provider network already works with Office Ally, and the clearinghouse provides free online messaging tools to both providers and members, said Jim Orchison, director of BSC's network design and programs.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has selected the Callidus Monaco Suite to manage its sales performance and compensation programs, the San Jose, Calif.-based software vendor announced recently. Under the enterprise software-as-a-service agreement, the health plan will use Monaco for its 4,000 brokers.
The information security service SecureWorks, which protects 82 healthcare companies in the United States, reported Tuesday that attempted hacker attacks aimed at its clients doubled in the fourth quarter of 2009.
While the first nine months of the year averaged 6,500 attack attempts per day, the last three months saw that number leap to 13,400, SecureWorks reports. Most striking about those figures is that other companies protected by the firm saw no similar increase.
Thomson Reuters has acquired ProfSoft, Inc., a healthcare technology company that provides health plans with analytic software and services to assess physician and hospital performance.
The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Healthcare data is rendered meaningless unless it can be shared, industry experts say.
Physicians taking part in a two-year medical home pilot program will soon have access to new technology designed to help them identify patient care opportunities.
Premier healthcare alliance, which encompasses 2,300 not-for profit hospitals and health systems and more than 63,000 other healthcare organizations, addressed healthcare reform in a letter to Congressional leadership Jan. 12.
The Baylor Health Care System, based in Dallas, has selected a vendor to manage the automated processing of nearly 300,000 invoices per year across its 12-hospital system.
The Food and Drug Administration awarded a $72 million contract to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care to develop a test version of the FDA's Sentinel system, an electronic network designed to sift health data for threats to medical product safety.