WAYNE, Pa. — The formation of a collaborative care consortium to provide regional health information networks (RHIOs), provider communities, and health insurance plans with pre-packaged, integrated components of payer/provider information exchange was announced today by MEDecision, Inc., the leader in collaborative care management. Its mission is to enable providers, payers and public health officials to improve the quality of care and reduce costs with on-demand, private and secure access to a patient’s relevant digital records wherever care is delivered.
The CollaboraCare Consortium, LLC, established by MEDecision, includes among its members such leading healthcare IT vendors as Cardtronic Technology, DrFirst, HealthTrio, HealthVision, Hx Technologies, iMetrikus, and Wellogic. An additional 5 to 10 members are expected to join throughout 2005. The national health practice of Blank Rome, LLP, has been engaged by the CollaboraCare Consortium as legal counsel for their expertise in RHIO formation and governance models.
“CollaboraCare was created by best-of-breed vendors as a critical step in building a national health information exchange that will improve patient care and reduce the cost of care delivery,” said John Capobianco, president and chief marketing of officer of MEDecision.
Formation of the consortium reflects the shared view of its members that newly emerging RHIOs and existing health plan payers will enthusiastically respond to a coordinated multi-vendor package. The collaboration of software products and services is designed to quickly and incrementally deploy patient data exchange between payers and care providers.
“We’re talking months, not years, and initially hundreds of thousands of dollars, not millions,” continued Capobianco. “The key is starting small and getting value from your investment before investing more.” He contends $30 million proposals to build data exchange systems that require years to generate participant value are deterring RHIOs and individual health plans from committing to the establishment of cost-saving electronic health record data exchange systems.
CollaboraCare’s speed-to-value, packaged-solutions approach to implement patient data exchange is reflected in the consortium’s ability to reduce both the cost of, and time needed for, exchange deployment. This is accomplished by sharing systems integration costs among members, instead of passing initial development costs to participating RHIOs.
Inside the CollaboraCare Consortium
The consortium’s “general contractor” approach limits the exposure of newly emerging RHIOs to time-intensive vendor solicitation and facilitates the ability to tailor specific data exchange system proposals to the unique needs of each interested RHIO. “Working as a team, our consortium members will be able to deliver better defined and targeted options to prospective customers, than could be possible from any single vendor,” said Capobianco.
Without the integration and other cost-saving options available from a multi-vendor consortium, RHIOs and other prospective data exchange funding entities would find the cost of developing system components for modest start-up operations to be prohibitive.
Said Capobianco, “CollaboraCare makes it possible for RHIOs and others to benefit from an incremental investment in a step-by-step process that demonstrates payback and value to payer and provider participants sooner rather than later.”
Consortium members currently are providing services or submitting proposals to approximately 20 RHIOs, including: Lansing, Mich.; Honolulu, Hawaii; Taconic Valley, N.Y.; Wilmington, Del.; New Haven, Conn.; Norfolk, Va.; Houston, Texas; Portland, Maine; and Orange, Calif.
Profile of Consortium Members
Cardtronic Technology, Inc., based in based in Minneapolis, Minn., is the leading provider of healthcare specific smart cards. Its smart card solutions lower costs for health plans, automate administrative tasks related to insurance verification, ease provider payment, and can offer important patient safety capabilities all in a proven and highly secure environment. (www.cardtronic.com)
DrFirst, Inc., based in Rockville, Md., is an eHealthcare company best known for its award-winning Rcopia ePrescribing product, the gold standard in the industry. Multiple Electronic Medical Record (EMR) vendors have adopted Rcopia as the engine behind their ePrescribing modules. DrFirst has many successful implementations of regional ePrescribing programs, including the eRx Collaborative in Massachusetts, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield in the Mid-Atlantic region, Henry Ford Health System in Michigan, and many major IPA’s in NY, Ohio, Washington, North Carolina and Massachusetts. (www.DrFirst.com)
HealthTrio, based in Englewood, Colo., offers e-health and core administrative solutions that enable health plans to reduce operational costs and strengthen relationships with constituents. The unique HealthTrio connectTM Individual Health Record (IHR) creates and delivers a single, understandable record of key health events. The IHR combines information manually entered by a patient with data that is updated automatically from many 3rd party clinical systems. The HealthTrio connectTM IHR provides the most complete, and customizable, picture of the patient. This vital information is used by clinicians at point-of-care and by patients in managing their health care.
HealthVision Inc., based in Irving, Texas, connects physicians, hospitals, consumers and patients through tools that enable the streamlined secure sharing of information.
Hx Technologies Inc., based in Philadelphia, Pa., builds and operates distributed and scalable health information exchanges meeting the privacy, security, and technical demands of competitive healthcare markets while leading the industry in cross-enterprise exchange of diagnostic imaging.
iMetrikus Inc., based in Carlsbad, Calif., provides next generation Member Engagement and Personal Health Management Solutions, based on Personal Health Records, to health plans and care providers.
Wellogic, based in Cambridge, Mass., provides clinical and consumer solutions that connect the entire healthcare community, providing clinicians, staff and patients with a longitudinal patient record that can be accessed at anytime, anywhere. (www.wellogic.com)
For more information about the CollaboraCare Consortium, please call (610) 540-0202 ext. 2401 or send email to Gary.Austin@MEDecision.com.
About CollaboraCare Consortium
CollaboraCare Consortium is a partnership of pioneering technology companies that, together, provide the interlocking building blocks and the ongoing support of seamless, mission-critical networks of health information. The Consortium’s networks scale from individual hospitals, clinical practices and health plans to multiple health systems, cities, regions, and states. Their end-to-end solutions are flexible and customizable to meet the needs of each healthcare community. The Consortium enables rapid and tangible wins for collaborative healthcare while laying the foundation for continued clinical excellence.
About MEDecision
MEDecision is the leader in collaborative care management. Founded in 1988, the company’s Integrated Medical Management solutions create a seamless payer-based medical management system to analyze, apply, administer and automate the management of healthcare programs and provide a common patient view at the point of care. MEDecision’s software solutions are being used to improve patient outcomes, reduce medical errors, and increase operational efficiencies for approximately one in every six Americans with health insurance. For more information about MEDecision and Integrated Medical Management, please call 610-540-0202, email Marketing@MEDecision.com or visit www.MEDecision.com.
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MEDecision is a trademark of MEDecision, Inc. The MEDecision logo and product names are also trademarks or registered trademarks of MEDecision, Inc. Other products and brand names are trademarks of their respective owners.
DrFirst also provides leading edge secure messaging platforms for physicians, hospitals and EMR/EHR vendors.