The Wayne, Pa.-based vendor of case, disease and utilization management software for insurers last year had a 10x40 booth and a half-dozen staff at the show. This year, the booth is 40x50 with 25 to 30 staff coming.
Privately held MEDecision has been growing at around 30% annually for several years, says Scott Storrer, president and CEO. He anticipates higher growth this year and near 40% in 2010. And the economic stimulus law, now the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is one big reason for the expected increase in business. "That's a lot of the reason why we are going big this year at HIMSS," he says.
Storrer believes ARRA will fuel electronic health records adoption and increased consumerism. He also believes next-generation versions of MEDecision's products introduced last year are well positioned to benefit.
The company for many years has offered the Patient Clinical Summary. It is software that enables insurers to send back to physicians a basic medical history--based on claims data--when responding to electronic insurance eligibility inquiries. But insurers have found it challenging to get physicians to accept the information.
MEDecision's new Nexalign health information exchange software, however, enables the vendor to augment the patient summary by pulling additional data, such as lab and radiology reports, from other sources. Storrer's betting the summary will be more valuable to physicians who can import it into their electronic health records. And he's betting the additional data will help many EHRs attain the "meaningful" status necessary to collect Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement incentives.
Vendors across the industry are racing to get their message out on how their company can support the goals of the stimulus law, Storrer says. And that's why he's gearing up for the HIMSS Conference. "That's the beauty of HIMSS, you get the EMR vendors and providers in one place," he adds. "We're going big and want to have as many conversations as we can with the target audiences."
--Joseph Goedert
Be the first to comment on this post using the section below.