Medsphere Systems, a vendor of electronic health records for hospitals and their clinics, has expanded its ambulatory technology suite by merging with physician software firm MBS/Net Inc. Under the arrangement, terms of which were not disclosed, all shares of MBS/Net were exchanged for shares of Medsphere.
Medsphere sells OpenVista, a commercialized version of the Veterans Administration’s VistA electronic health record. MBS/Net’s product suite includes electronic health record and document management systems, a practice management system with a rule-based scheduling application that interfaces with EHRs, and outsourced revenue cycle and practice hardware management services. MBS/Net has clients in 11 states with the majority in Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia.
Medsphere CEO Irv Lichtenwald
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Medsphere, which has ambulatory business with the Indian Health Service and affiliated clinics of hospital clients, historically has not targeted standalone physician practices but now can with MBS/Net.
The combination enables Medsphere to offer revenue cycle management as a new service, says Medsphere president and CEO Irv Lichtenwald; Medsphere previously subcontracted to other vendors to serve clients who wanted revenue cycle services. “We’ve seen the benefits the practice management and revenue cycle solutions have created for MBS/Net clients, in some instances boosting individual practice revenue by more than 100 percent,” Lichtenwald notes.
In addition, MBS/Net’s outsourced IT services to physician practices nicely compliments the advisory, systems hosting and IT outsourcing services of consultancy Phoenix Health System, which Medsphere owns, Lichtenwald says.
