New distributor program from A-Life Medical

Oct 5 2009

A-Life Medical, Inc., the pioneer and leading provider of computer-assisted coding (CAC) products and services to the healthcare industry, announced today that A-Life Hospital, its wholly owned subsidiary, introduced a new distributor program, A-Life Partners. A-Life Partners is designed to assure rapid distribution and easy market access to A-Life Hospital’s fully integrated hospital in-patient and facility-based CAC application and technology.

Under the A-Life Partners program, A-Life Hospital will identify and align with entities throughout the health information management arena that possess complementary technology to A-Life Hospital’s CAC solutions. A-Life’s solutions are built on its proprietary, patented Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, LifeCode®, which deciphers electronic transcribed patient encounters via the Internet through its data center, which are then appropriately coded for reimbursement purposes. This significantly expedites the billing and coding process for users.

A-Life Hospital forged it first partnership under the new A-Life Partners program with Ingenix, Inc., a leading provider of health information, technology and consulting services. Ingenix will represent Actus®, A-Life Hospital’s CAC application in the marketplace and also connect it with its Ingenix Web.Strat™ encoder. Extending Ingenix’s product portfolio and combining these complementary medical coding technologies will deliver greater value to coders by helping hospitals complete billing processes faster and more accurately, ultimately accelerating payments and reducing administrative costs.

The Actus hospital-based product has been in use for about one year at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center where executives from its health information management and finance team have validated significant increased coder productivity, reduced coder overtime, enhanced coding accuracy, reduced third party audit fees and realized an optimized Case Mix Index, which denotes revenue capture.

Ron Jones, senior vice president at Ingenix, said: “Our agreement with A-Life allows Ingenix’s customers easy access to the market’s leading CAC technology, which will expedite the coding process for them. Coding quality, compliance, productivity, proven market success and hospital financial returns were among the key criteria we used to evaluate CAC capabilities before choosing A-Life’s unparalleled solution. We look forward to working together to bring the market a powerful and robust CAC product.”

Tom Bang, chief executive officer at A-Life Medical, added: “A-Life Hospital, along with its partners, is committed to improving healthcare information technology and data management processes by empowering coders with complete and relevant clinical information. A-Life Medical’s patented, state-of-the art NLP, LifeCode, provides coders optimal efficiency within one application. We are pleased to align with companies such as Ingenix to further enhance the presence of our CAC solution within the coding marketplace, where users can witness firsthand the value of LifeCode and innovative solutions. Now, through our A-Life Partners program, healthcare providers have the opportunity to quickly access A-Life’s technology and improve their coding operations while optimizing reimbursements.”