Expanded Relationship Based on Significant Improvements in Members’ Health
Atlanta, GA, July 25, 2008 – MDdatacor, Inc., a leader in health care quality management solutions for health plans and providers, today announced it has entered into a long-term agreement with Wellmark, Inc. to continue to support Wellmark’s Collaboration on QualitySM Incent and Reward Best Practices initiative, a collaboration between Wellmark and primary care clinicians to promote improved quality health care and increased efficiency.
Wellmark, Inc. does business as Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Iowa. Wellmark and its subsidiaries and affiliated companies, insure or pay health benefit claims for more than two million members in Iowa and South Dakota.
For the past two years, the innovative arrangement between Wellmark and MDdatacor has enabled participating clinicians to enhance their focus on improving health outcomes for diabetic and hypertensive patients, and has now expanded to include asthma, childhood immunizations, and cancer screenings.
MDdatacor has been working with Wellmark since 2006 to support initiatives that promote quality health care and increased efficiency. MDdatacor’s proprietary CareInformatixTM technology collects and analyzes claims and physicians’ clinical data from a variety of sources, and in turn, provides physicians with reports that identify patients whose current treatment does not achieve evidence-based guidelines. MDdatacor is currently the only company able to provide its customers with both claims and comprehensive clinical data, making the data more accurate, timely and, ultimately, valuable.
According to Timothy G. Roche, co-founder, president and chief executive officer of MDdatacor, the willingness of physicians to use the MDdatacor Web-based decision-support tools can be attributed to the fact that the data is derived from their own patient records in the form of transcribed notes, electronic medical records and lab results.
“MDdatacor has been fortunate to work with such an innovative health plan that sees the value of going beyond the medical claims data and utilizing clinical data to provide physicians with actionable information at the point-of-care, which has led to tremendous improvements in patients’ health,” said Roche.
MDdatacor recently conducted a study of more than 9,000 Wellmark diabetic patients, analyzing both process and outcomes measures as outlined in evidence-based guidelines. The study measured the percentage increase in patients receiving an annual HbA1C, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and blood pressure tests, as well as the improved clinical outcomes as measured by lowered test scores for each of those measures. The company plans to publish a white paper detailing the results of the study in the near future
MDdatacor facilitates physician-centric disease management, focused on non-compliant patients as measured against evidence–based guidelines. As a result, physicians have the information they need on their entire patient population to proactively manage patient care.
“The expansion of MDdatacor’s relationship with Wellmark clearly shows the significance of this unique approach to improving patient outcomes, which has proven to be not only successful but also more cost-effective than traditional disease management methods,” said John S. Watts, Jr., MDdatacor executive chairman.
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