SYNERMED News
Printable Version
Online Health And Medical Information Service, SynermedConnect.com
Los Angeles – November 6, 2007 – Los Angeles-based SynerMed, Inc., the largest Medicaid managed service organization (MSO) in the state of California, announced that almost half of daily business volume is now done through SynerMed Connect!, the company’s online portal for health care transactions. Since its launch two years ago, the comprehensive site has created more than 1,700 user accounts. Recent company reports have shown that even more SynerMed customers – primarily physicians and health administrators – are taking advantage of the efficiency and convenience offered by SynerMed Connect. In the month of October alone, the company saw a 10 percent increase in the use of this service.
The only MSO to offer such a robust set of online tools and services, SynerMed Connect does more than gather and store health and medical information – it actually offers a diverse menu of functions including authorizations, claims submissions, eligibility verification services. The system also has a unique Web-based business application that allows SynerMed’s medical staff to communicate directly with patient’s physicians, increasing the efficiency of patient care. In addition, SynerMed Connect caters to the large number of medical practices that haven’t been able to purchase the sophisticated – and expensive – Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems. For these customers, a fax machine can be used to enter data into the SynerMed Connect network.
“Our customers have responded very positively to SynerMed Connect. In fact, we’ve noticed a trend toward online processing – about 40 percent of our claims now come in through this system,” said James Mason, president and chief operating officer of SynerMed. “SynerMed has been focused on making managed care work more effectively and efficiently for years. Since we already have the highest online privacy and security measures in place to protect consumer’s health information, it seemed like a natural progression to build an online system that allows health administrators and individual physicians to access, store and process information instantaneously.”
A Closer Look at the Online Medical and Health Information Trend
Across the country, insurance providers and private companies are marketing their own versions of patient-controlled medical record storehouses. In fact, Dossia, a collaboration of several large employers including Intel (NDAQ: INTC) and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), will begin offering employees a personal health record that includes information for medical testing labs and all other sources in addition to records from medical claims.
The newest of these ventures is Microsoft Corp.’s (NDAQ: MSFT) Health Vault, which launched recently as an online library for individual medical records. But others, including Revolution Health, an information Web site that offers medical record management to those who pay a fee, are launching sites that can store medical histories, immunization and other records obtained from doctor’s offices and hospitals.
“The idea behind this trend is for consumers to take a more active role in their health care, increasing transparency within the system, and ultimately giving consumers the information they need to make more informed medical choices that improve quality and drive down costs,” said Mason. “However, technology alone – as is the case with some of these new medical record storehouses – will not provide our health care system the transparency it needs
to thrive. Simply arming consumers with health information is relatively useless without applications in place to apply that information to the health care system as a whole.”
Skeptics of the online health and medical information trend have also added that companies unfamiliar with the intricacies of the health care system may find it complex and difficult to navigate – which could ultimately put consumer’s privacy and safety in jeopardy.
About SynerMed, Inc.
Headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif., SynerMed, Inc. is a leading managed services organization (MSO) and business process outsourcer (BPO) that offers the most comprehensive, creative solutions for health care organizations and employers today. The company has relationships with all major Medicaid, commercial and senior health plans; and manages over $120 million a year in health care benefits for more than 250,000 members through its customers - which consist of IPAs, medical groups, community clinics, third-party administrators (TPAs), health plans and hospitals. Through the company’s state-of-the-art products and services offering, SynerMed is committed to partnering with its customers to provide cost-effective, personalized solutions for their highly-specific needs so they can operate more efficiently and better care for their members. For more information, visit www.isynermed.com.