Healthcare IT News - December 2008 - (Page 34)

34 Healthcare IT News December 2008 ■ www.HealthcareITNews.com NEWSBRIEFS VERmoNt hEalth plaN SaVES halF mIllIoN dollaRS WIth It Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont has saved nearly a half-million dollars by employing compensation management technology. BCBSVT employed VUE Compensation Management, a Microsoft .NET framework-based application developed by Computer Solutions & Software International. Health plan executives say the new software has enabled BCBSVT to decouple broker commissions from insurance premiums, reduce manual interventions by 97 percent and go paperless with broker commission statements. Coventry goes to telemonitoring By PaTTy ENrado, Contributing Editor CIGNa, Katz SEttlE patENt dISputE oVER VoICE appS Philadelphia-based CIGNA Corp., one of the largest investor-owned health plans in the country, and Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, headquartered in Los Angeles, have settled patent litigation. Claims against CIGNA will be dropped and CIGNA will receive a nonexclusive license under a patent portfolio owned by Katz relating to interactive voice applications. Katz and UnitedHealth Group also settled patent disputes. UnitedHealth Group has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum for a nonexclusive license of patents Katz owns relating to interactive voice applications. – Coventry Health Care is launching its home health thE NEWS: Coventry ➔ telemonitoring program for 500 conHealth Care is offering gestive heart failure, or CHF, patients a new home health in its Kansas City health plan. telemonitoring program. InterComponentWare is expectWhat It mEaNS: ➔ ed to roll out its technology in the 500 congestive heart first quarter of 2009. failure patients in its “We’re trying to prove the funKansas City health plan damental concept that by using will get IT to assist in technology we can assist people to their treatment plans. improve their compliance to their doctor’s treatment plan and overall health,” said Vishu Jhaveri, MD, Coventry Health Care’s headquarters in Bethesda, MD. dence-based medicine, care management executive vice president and chief support services, health information medical officer for Coventry. The deployment of InterComponentWare’s exchange for physicians and incentives for Professional Exchange Server and Device physicians and members. “We are moving toward taking peoConnectivity Solution will enable data to be downloaded in near real time ple with serious chronic conditions and from the home medical devices to the implementing care centers to look after care centers, said Jeremy Coote, CEO of them and monitor their progress,” said Coote. “By moving secure medical data, InterComponentWare. The pilot also includes the use of evi- we are moving disease management to the BETHESDA, MD interoperability game,” he said. Spiraling healthcare costs, an economic crisis deepening and an aging population are creating what Coote calls “the perfect storm” for creating care centers to monitor chronic care patients. In October, Better Health Care Together released a study by economist Robert Litan that noted remote monitoring technologies could reduce U.S. healthcare costs by $197 billion over the next 25 years. “It’s important to interact right now with certain diseases such as CHF,” said Thomas Waller, chief medical officer of InterComponentWare. “It’s becoming more important for payers,” he said. Jhaveri said CHF is typically found in the 65-plus age, or Medicare, population, but is now being diagnosed in people in their early 50s as a result of early heart attacks due to diabetes, obesity and lifestyle CovENTry see page 36 hEalth INSuRERS Buy tEChNoloGy lICENSES FoR CS Healthcare plans have purchased licenses under the patent portfolio held by Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing. The licenses provide technology in the automated healthcare services field, such as customer service. Among recent health plan purchasers are Aetna, CIGNA and UnitedHealth Group. “Aetna is focused on making our customer experience the best it can possibly be,” said Cynthia Michener, Aetna’s assistant vice president of public relations. Medicare AmeriHealth works on e-strategy PHr pilot launched By PaTTy ENrado, Contributing Editor PHILADELPHIA By BErNIE MoNEgaIN, Editor PHOENIX - Medicare beneficiaries in Arizona and Utah are poised to begin a personal health record pilot in early 2009. Hea l t h a n d Hu m an Services Secretary Michael Leavitt announced the four participating PHR companies. Medicare will give beneficiaries a choice among Google Health, HealthTrio, PHr see page 35 mEdICaRE SItE oFFERS toolS FoR dRuG plaN CompaRISoN The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is giving beneficiaries, their caregivers, and family members online tools for reviewing 2009 Medicare prescription drug plan and health plan information through the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Finder and Medicare Options Compare at the Medicare Web site. “This year it is especially important for beneficiaries to use our online tools to compare their current drug and health plan coverage to the options available for 2009 and take action to choose a plan that best meets their needs,” said CMS Acting Administrator Kerry Weems. More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: PaYerS 1208 Clinical alerts drive compliance Study finds when clinical alerts are sent to patient, physician compliance is greater. NEW YORK By PaTTy ENrado, Contributing Editor – The AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies, the largest Medicaid managed care organization in the country, has deployed NaviMedix’s provider communications platform for six of its AmeriHealth Mercy health plans. The replacement of its platform with NaviNet aligns with the company’s e-business strategy of making it easier for providers to conduct business with them, increase provider adoption and self-service, and reduce costs for the health plan, said Joseph Miller, director of e-Business at AmeriHealth Mercy Family of Companies. The deployment also speaks to the company’s broader IT plan to deliver information in a service oriented architecture, he said. “As a medium-size health plan, we looked at NaviMedix as an opportunity to leverage the footprint of the larger health plans that work with NaviNet,” he said. The second phase of the rollout in the first quar- AmeriHealth Mercy is based in Philadelphia. ter of 2009 includes delivering electronic medical record-like capabilities through NaviNet such as alerts for wellness visits and tests, he said. While its healthcare providers include a number of academic medical centers and large provider groups, which have electronic medical records, or E-BUSINESS see page 35 ● – ActiveHealth Management has released the results of a study that show compliance to clinical alerts based on evidence-based medical guidelines is greater when the alerts are sent to both the physician and patient. “The extremely impor tant lesson here for anybody who’s trying to improve healthcare outcomes is to involve both Stephen Rosenberg, MD patients and the whole team of healthcare professionals,” said Stephen Rosenberg, MD, senior vice president of outcomes research at ActiveHealth Management and the study’s lead researcher. The study, which was published in the November issue of The American Journal of Management Care, revealed that compliance increased by 12.5 percent when clinical alerts were sent to patients. The greatest increase in alErTS see page 36 Insured consumers use of online community health resources USE oNlINE rESoUrCES 76% Base: US commercially insured online consumers doN’T USE oNlINE rESoUrCES 24% e ● Connect: GraPHS 1208 NORTH AMERICAN TECHNOGRAPHICS 2007 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10498

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - December 2008

Healthcare IT News - December 2008 Contents AHIC 2.0 Debuts See How It Works Monitored to Health Right Decisions Neurologist Needed HiMSS Insider: Four to the Board Heartened Generation Next Clinical Toolkit: Inpatient EMRs Management Solutions: Asset Tracking

Healthcare IT News - December 2008

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