MEDecision taps premier supplier of clinical best practices and data

Added Dr. Harry L. Leider, president at IFI Health Solutions: "Our relationship with MEDecision gives us access to a tremendous opportunity to deliver our clinical data and care management best practices via the industry's leading care management system. The audience for our solutions has now grown by over 60 managed care organisations, including more than half of the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in the United States."

The companies' collaboration unites the functionally integrated work flow, process automation, and decision-tree, branching logic of MEDecision's Integrated Medical Management with IFI Health Solutions' expertise in producing and validating clinical best practices and care management processes. The resulting combination promises to profoundly assist the delivery of care management to the entire health care marketplace. Most notably, Managed care organisations will be able to deliver better, more consistent information to the point of care to benefit providers and patients while continuing to drive down administrative costs.

To establish its clinical best practices and processes, IFI Health Solutions reviews the most recent medical literature and integrates consensus statements from expert societies with opinions of experts in the relevant clinical areas. The information is then reviewed by peer committees of doctors, care managers, and managed care leaders to verify it represents clinical and care management content that is both accurate and useful to end-users.

Continued MEDecision's Dr. DePhillips: "IFI Health Solutions has been providing clinical practices, procedures, and data to managed care organizations for many years. They've amassed a huge population of clinical data and have the provider relationships that ensure thorough, knowledgeable peer review on a myriad of topics."

The long-term agreement also specifies regular reviews, updates, and maintenance of the IFI Health Solutions content. IFI Health Solutions' clinical consulting group will also be available to supplement MEDecision's own services organization in clinical content deployments.

MEDecision is a software and services provider of integrated care management solutions. Founded in 1988, the company specializes in linking patients, providers and payers in an information network that relies upon electronic health records to improve overall health outcomes and reduce costs. MEDecision's software products are being used by more than 60 managed care organisations, including more than half of all Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, to improve the quality of health care and reduce both administrative and unnecessary clinical costs for approximately one in every seven Americans with health insurance.

More news on MEDecision is available in the VMW August 2004 article MEDecision's Integrated Medical Management now processing over 42 million United States patients.