Emdeon Prepares Customers for ACA with Enterprise Patient Access Solution

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Emdeon Inc., a leading provider of healthcare revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions, today announced it received an 89.4 point enterprise score on the KLAS Enterprise Patient Access report for 2013. In connection with the report, KLAS polled the healthcare provider community to understand thoughts and challenges related to single-vendor strategies versus multiple-vendor strategies for solving the automation of tasks associated with patient access processes. Emdeon scored highly among vendors offering comprehensive enterprise solutions consisting of components such as preauthorization, eligibility verification, address verification, estimated patient responsibility, electronic orders management, eligibility authorization, financial portal and others.

The KLAS Enterprise Patient Access report for 2013 found that estimated patient responsibility, eligibility verification and preauthorization were the three "top of mind" factors providers considered most important for patient access tasks. Hospitals, physicians and their staff are charged with understanding numerous government and commercial insurance plans in order to verify patient financial, demographic and benefits information and increase the likelihood of receiving full payments for services they provide. Emdeon helps customers overcome these revenue cycle challenges by combining real-time patient access information with its leading technology and workflow solutions. Emdeon also provides patient advocacy-based eligibility and enrollment services that provide its hospital clients with an effective solution to manage their uninsured and underinsured patient base and generate meaningful incremental cash flow.

"Effectively managing patient access has always been critical for hospitals to ensure they will be paid appropriately for the services they provide," said Ulrich Brechbuhl, executive vice president of revenue cycle solutions for Emdeon. "With millions more people becoming eligible for coverage under the ACA, Emdeon continues to help our customers maximize their cash flow by providing solutions to ensure providers collect everything they are due from patients with existing benefits coverage, as well as get uninsured and underinsured patients enrolled for benefits."

Emdeon Patient Access Master™ and Emdeon Enrollment & Eligibility Services are suites of enterprise patient access workflow technology and services that simplify the collection and validation of patient information and allow access to useful patient eligibility and financial information before or during registration. By assessing the eligibility and financial information of patients, providers can reduce the risk of bad debt and denied claims. Access to this real-time information also can help hospitals better forecast the need for charity care, thereby strengthening the revenue cycle from the front-end to mitigate back-end reimbursement and payment challenges.

Brechbuhl continued, "As the single largest clinical, financial and administrative health information exchange in the U.S., Emdeon is uniquely positioned to address the pending influx of currently uninsured and underinsured patients who may qualify for Medicaid or be able to access health insurance by purchasing coverage via the ACA insurance exchanges beginning January 1, 2014. Our technology-enabled enrollment services put patient advocacy professionals in our customers' facilities to help them meet the challenges of the changing patient access environment and ensure that patients are enrolled in the appropriate insurance affordability product. We are pleased to be recognized by KLAS for our customer service and the breadth of our offerings, especially as we focus on the new ACA-related opportunities."

Emdeon's eligibility and enrollment services place patient advocacy professionals on-site that have an extensive knowledge of local, state and federal eligibility requirements for uninsured and underinsured patients, as well as how the ACA will impact patients that are either newly eligible for Medicaid or can access subsidies to support the purchase of an insurance product on the ACA insurance exchanges. These professionals interview patients, guide them through the complex application processes and proactively follow-up on submitted applications. This expertise offers a superior value proposition that assists healthcare providers in increasing cash recovery, reducing cycle time from initial patient referral to payment remittance, enhancing patient satisfaction and improving community relations.

About Emdeon
Emdeon is a leading provider of revenue and payment cycle management and clinical information exchange solutions, connecting payers, providers and patients in the U.S. healthcare system. Emdeon's offerings integrate and automate key business and administrative functions of its payer and provider customers throughout the patient encounter. Through the use of Emdeon's comprehensive suite of solutions, which are designed to easily integrate with existing technology infrastructures, customers are able to improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase cash flow and more efficiently manage the complex revenue and payment cycle and clinical information exchange processes. For more information, visit www.emdeon.com.

About KLAS
KLAS is a research firm on a global mission to improve healthcare delivery by enabling providers to be heard and to be counted. Working with thousands of healthcare executives and clinicians, KLAS gathers data on software, services, medical equipment, and infrastructure systems to deliver timely reports, trends, and statistical overviews. The research directly represents the provider voice and acts as a catalyst for improving vendor performance. KLAS was founded in 1996, and their staff and advisory board average 25 years of healthcare information technology experience. Follow KLAS on Twitter at www.twitter.com/KLASresearch.

SOURCE Emdeon Inc.