Thanks, appreciate these insights. I've been contemplating VA's Oracle / Cerner implementation and wondered if implementing the same systems across…
UnitedHealth Group To Acquire A-Life Medical
UnitedHealth Group announced after the market close Tuesday that it will acquire computer-assisted coding vendor A-Life Medical of San Diego, CA. Terms were not disclosed.
UnitedHealth Group will add A-Life Medical to its Ingenix Health Care Delivery business, extending a strategic alliance formed between the companies last year to develop advanced coding solutions.
A-Life Medical’s products include the LifeCode natural language processing solution, which analyzes clinical documentation to identify diagnoses and procedures and recommend ICD-9 and CPT-4 codes to coders. Its Actus computer-assisted coding product will allow Ingenix to market services to providers transitioning to ICD-10 by the mandatory October 1, 2013 date.
The acquisition is UnitedHealth’s fourth technology-related buy so far this year, having previously absorbed Picis (high acuity systems), Executive Health Resources (medical necessity and compliance), and Axolotol (health information exchange systems).
Hey United, get a life!
Now I see why their physician reimbursement rates are so low. They’re too busy hoarding cash to purchase these companies.
Didn’t United lose a big law suit for an EHR that they owned that was down-coding reimbursements? Why would an MD trust them to be their medical records partner?