MEDecision Issues Call to Partner with Health IT Vendors to Distribute Its Real-time, Actionable Electronic Health Records

WAYNE, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MEDecision, Inc., a leading provider of collaborative health care management solutions, today announced its call to partner with Health Information Technology (HIT) vendors. Spurred by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and President Obama’s five-year deadline for making America’s health records electronic, the MEDecision invitation encourages vendors throughout the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) ecosystem to leverage MEDecision’s real-time, actionable information in their own technology offerings. Please see related announcement, “MEDecision EHRs Meet Obama’s $19B Health Care IT Challenge.”

“President Obama has issued the health care industry a clear call to action: Meaningful use of electronic health records now,” said MEDecision President and Chief Operating Officer Scott A. Storrer. “That’s driving a lot of vendors to reinvent a wheel that MEDecision already developed over the past 20 years and continues to optimize today. By harnessing the data and analytics found in MEDecision’s Clinical Summaries, HIT vendors can augment their electronic health records with real-time, actionable information, which can jumpstart their own offerings.”

MEDecision is extending its partner invitation to all members of the EMR ecosystem, including

• EMR vendors, such as Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner Millenium, eClinicalWorks, e-MDs, Epic, GE Centricity EMR, Greenway Medical, iMedica, McKesson, and NextGen
• Personal Health Record vendors, such as CapMed, Dossia, HealthTrio, Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault
• Practice Management Systems vendors, such as Allscripts, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, e-MDs, Epic, GE Centricity Practice, Greenway Medical, iMedica, McKesson, NextGen and Sage
• Health Information Systems vendors, such as Cerner, Eclipsys, Epic, GE, Meditech, Quadramed and Siemens
• Provider Portal vendors, such as Availity, Medem and NaviMedix
• Consumer Portal vendors, such as e-MDs, Epic, Medfusion, RelayHealth, WebMD, MyOptumHealth and Trizetto
• eRx/Formulary vendors, such as AllScripts, DrFirst and RxNT

MEDecision Presents Compelling Value Proposition to Fuel EHRs

Obama has singled out the Electronic Health Record (EHR) as critical to lowering health care costs and improving health care quality. The EHR promises to consolidate a patient’s entire clinical history, regardless of provider or source, into a single, universally-accessible record. Such a record will help health care providers precisely diagnose and treat patients in the broader context of their current and historical conditions, medications and procedures.

For a proven example of actionable information at work in an emergency room, see “Economic Evaluation of Use of a Payer-based Electronic Health Record,” please visit: http://www.medecision.com/uploads/An_Economic_Evaluation.pdf.

Before health care providers can take advantage of the EHR, however, the systems in use in provider offices and facilities must be populated with enough patient information to make the electronic record meaningful. Today, however, most systems in use contain patient data from a single provider office or facility. Patient data from laboratories, pharmacies, clinics and other providers and sources has been historically unavailable.

To give providers a real-time, 360-degree view of a patient’s medical history and information, MEDecision helps HIT vendors rapidly augment their EHR systems with patient information that offers immediate clinical value. Today, MEDecision provides:

• Real-time patient data from care management plans, as well as detailed data from hospitals, clinics, labs, physicians, pharmacies, self-surveys and other sources; and
• Nexalign Clinical Summaries that summarize and analyze patient, provider, and payer data to render actionable information for treatment plans and to identify gaps in care.

MEDecision is exhibiting at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2009 Conference and Exhibition, April 4–8 at McCormick Place in Chicago. The company will be in booth 2015, a space four-times larger than last year’s booth. MEDecision will also sponsor the Saturday, April 4, Payer Symposium and the Payer Roundtable Breakfast on Monday, April 6.

For more information about MEDecision’s EMR partner program, please contact Lori Walsh at Lori.Walsh@MEDecision.com or 610-540-0202 ext. 1177.

For more information about MEDecision, please visit www.MEDecision.com and subscribe to an RSS feed at http://www.MEDecision.com/blog/.

Recent News and Resources

MEDecision EHRs Meet Obama’s $19B Health Care IT Challenge; http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/medecision/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090330005797&newsLang=en

MEDecision’s Alineo Collaborative Health Care Platform Deployed at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/medecision/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090309005294&newsLang=en

MEDecision Names Richard M. Haviland Senior Vice President of Human Resources: http://www.businesswire.com/news/medecision/20090211006111/en

MEDecision Blog: http://www.MEDecision.com/blog

MEDecision Webinars: http://www.medecision.com/Webinar

MEDecision 2009 User Conference, May 6-8: http://www.medecision.com/user_conference/Content

About MEDecision

MEDecision offers collaborative health care management solutions that provide a simplified and smart way to manage the health of members and member populations which can improve the quality and affordability of care. Based on state-of-the-art technology, MEDecision's solutions include Alineo™, a collaborative health care management platform for managing case, disease and utilization management and Nexalign™, a collaborative health care information exchange service. MEDecision believes that, in the aggregate, its health care payer customers insure or manage care for approximately one in every six people in the U.S. with health insurance. For more information, please visit www.MEDecision.com.

MEDecision is a trademark of MEDecision, Inc. The MEDecision logo and product names are also trademarks or registered trademarks of MEDecision, Inc. Other product and brand names are trademarks of their respective owners.