Well it might cost you just a bit more to have the assurance that your office, hospital or other healthcare facility is coding correctly if you subscribe to the services (algorithms) offered by A-Life Medical which is now part of Ingenix. The United Behemoth grows again with acquisition number 6 this year.
The coding services of A-Life generated over $17 million in revenue last year and with all the data functionality of Ingenix, you might want to guess that this service will be either aggregated or integrated to their suites of services. It’s another transaction fee coming out out of the claim as it travels from point A to point B. Data services as such make million of dollars and it has to come from somewhere. The board of directors is kind of interesting with heavy on investors and former investment bankers and one with some time at Goldman Sachs. The transaction business just keeps feeding itself with more algorithms to pay for as they are created. We need a Department of Algorithms I think somewhere down the road to audit some of this to ensure people are not being over charged and under paid.
My Algorithm Didn’t Do That, Did It? Is There a “Department of Algorithms” in Our Future?
One of the services touted here is the ability to use digital images al vascular anatomy with automated interpretation of physician documentation to better code catheter based surgeries, code that catheter so you get paid correctly and everyone knows the huge number of catheters out there today, cha ching cha ching. Ingenix is the same subsidiary that created the data base where everyone can file by October 1st for all their short payments made, based on their out of network algorithmic calculations they used for years.
From the website:
“A-Life Medical, Inc. is the leading provider of computer-assisted coding (CAC) products and services for the healthcare industry. A-Life Medical pioneered the CAC sector back in 1996, when we introduced for the first time advanced computerized coding and coder management solutions.”
Last month Ingenix made this announcement…
Ingenix Consulting Adds New Consulting Gig–Strategic Technology Solutions–Focus on Health IT Executives On How to Invest and Implement Algorithmic Performance Strategies
Here’s a couple of the other recent acquisitions…
Ingenix (Subsidiary of United Health Care) Buys QualityMetric – More Algorithmic Formulas To Choose From To Identify Future Risk and Cost
UnitedHealth subsidiary (Ingenix Subsidiary I3) Acquires ChinaGate – Working to Sell Chinese Products Globally
Ingenix is the healthcare algorithm business on steroids, just take a look at the long list of software services on the site, all analytics and business intelligence for this subsidiary of United Health Group (the care is gone)
UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it will buy A-Life Medical Inc., a closely held maker of medical- coding software, in its fourth purchase this year of a company focused on helping doctors and hospitals reduce costs.
A-Life assists more than 40,000 U.S. physicians with billing, processing more than 5 million transactions monthly, Minnetonka, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth, the biggest U.S. health plan by sales, said in a statement today. Terms weren’t disclosed. A-Life, based in San Diego, will join Ingenix, UnitedHealth’s health-technology and consulting unit.
UnitedHealth to Acquire A-Life, San Diego Maker of Software - Bloomberg
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