Availity and Medecision Innovate to Improve Care Transitions, Reduce Preventable Hospital Readmissions

Shannon Thuren, 904-470-4545Director of CommunicationsorMichael Llewellyn, 484-323-2759Director, Marketing Communications

Availity and Medecision have integrated their flagship solutions to enable smoother transitions of care and reduce preventable hospital readmissions. Optimizing the care of patients moving between hospitals, care institutions and home, as well as reducing hospital readmissions, are two of the most significant opportunities for cost reduction and quality outcome improvement in the healthcare industry. Smoother transitions and reduced admissions benefit health plans, care managers, hospitals, physicians, patients, and their families and caregivers. Preventable readmissions alone represent $30 billion in annual healthcare costs, with . Availity and Medecision are currently working with multiple health plans and hospitals to introduce and implement this solution.

Leveraging the integrated power of Medecision’s Aerial™ care management solution and Availity’s network of physicians and hospitals, health plans and care providers will be connected in real-time through automated admission and discharge information so health plan care managers or physician-based care coordinators can initiate a post-discharge care plan immediately. The automation of this important step replaces inconsistent and lengthy (often weeks-long) manual practices, where care may have been negatively affected due to lagging and inconsistent notifications.

“Real-time care transitions directly attack the problem of costly preventable hospital readmissions, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle we’re solving,” said Deborah M. Gage, President and CEO of Medecision. “Every investment decision we make is to help our payer and care provider clients share immediate and complete information – personalized to the patient -- that drives accurate decision making and sets the foundation for better care.”

“Integrating our discharge capabilities with Medecision responds directly to the growing demand from our customers for the clinical solutions we announced in June,” said Russ Thomas, CEO of Availity. “By enabling physicians, hospitals and health plans to exchange time-critical information at the moment of discharge, we resolve workflow inefficiencies that present barriers to best practices in care management. The integration with Aerial is one more application of real-time clinical information we’re developing to meet the demands of new payment structures based on quality and patient outcomes.”

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More Than 4 Million Potentially Preventable Admissions Cost Hospitals Nearly $31 Billion. AHRQ News and Numbers, April 29, 2009. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD

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