Healtheon and Beech Street, the Second Largest PPO in the US, Sign Joint Agreement for Internet-Based Healthcare Information Services.PALO ALTO Palo Alto, city, California Palo Alto (păl`ō ăl`tō), city (1990 pop. 55,900), Santa Clara co., W Calif.; inc. 1894. Although primarily residential, Palo Alto has aerospace, electronics, and advanced research industries. , Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--December 18, 1997-- $50 Million Agreement Includes Joint Software Application Development Healtheon Corporation today announced that Beech Street Corporation will be making Healtheon's Internet-based healthcare information services See Information Systems. available to its 4,000 clients, 270,000 physician locations and 3,600 hospitals in 49 states, creating a virtual healthcare information network. The agreement includes joint software and application development for provider contract management, claims repricing Repricing To change the price of an asset. In derivatives, it sometimes refers to the exchange of options of with different strike prices. repricing , directory solutions, and integrated provider management systems. The agreement is valued at $50 million. The rollout of services will begin in mid-1998. "Both the use of provider networks and the complexity of benefit plans is increasing rapidly," said George J. Bregante, president of Beech Street. "We have recognized the power of the Internet to address the exploding administrative costs administrative costs, n.pl the overhead expenses incurred in the operation of a dental benefits program, excluding costs of dental services provided. and legacy systems limitations of our payer clients. Beech Street decided to set the competitive standard for Internet connectivity and commerce in the healthcare industry by partnering with Healtheon, the market leader in this field." The agreement provides for joint software development of Internet-based applications to be deployed in a comprehensive network computing architecture. In addition, Healtheon will assume responsibility for managing and migrating Beech Street's systems to a new web-based networked environment. Beech Street's future transaction processing and communications with its customers and providers will rely on Healtheon's Virtual Healthcare Network (VHN VHN Vickers Hardness Number VHN Virtual Health Network (UK) VHN Virtual Home Network ), a network of shared software applications developed by Healtheon and its partners. VHN utilizes a powerful object-based middleware platform that affords ease of integration and faster processing speeds with legacy systems through the Internet, intranet, and extranets. The web-based platform enables application functions and complex transaction processing to execute in a fault-tolerant, secure, scalable shared services shared services, n.pl the administrative, clinical, or other service functions that are common to two or more hospitals or their health care facilities and used jointly or cooperatively by them. environment. "Combining the managed care domain knowledge of Beech Street with Healtheon's technology and engineering skills allows us to push the healthcare industry's standards for connectivity, openness, and service aggressively forward," said Mike Long, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Healtheon. "Beech Street shares our commitment to simplifying communications between providers, payers, employers and patients. We are pleased they have chosen Healtheon as a partner in delivering unprecedented levels of service to their customers." Business Insurance magazine ranked Beech Street as the second largest PPO PPO abbr. preferred provider organization PPO Managed care Preferred provider organization, see there Infectious disease Pleuropneumonia-like organism, see there provider in the nation with over 18.7 million patient lives accessing its national PPO network. Beech Street serves over 4,000 insurance companies, third party administrators, employers, employer coalitions, union groups and government entities from its Irvine-based operations and its 5 regional sales and provider contracting offices. "This unique partnership with a market-leading managed care company is further confirmation that the healthcare industry will adopt new and innovative solutions to remain competitive," said Jim Clark, founder and chairman of Healtheon. "Fragmented and suboptimized legacy computing systems can't effectively respond to the competitive challenges and consumer needs of the 21st cen Beech Street, based in Irvine, CA is one of the nat ion's most experienced managed health care companies. Founded in 1951, Beech Street is currently the largest national, independent, full-line PPO provider of managed health care in the United States Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. The U.S. spends more on health care, both as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) and on a per-capita basis, than any other nation in the world. Current estimates put U.S. . The company serves a wide variety of health benefits and workers' compensation workers' compensation, payment by employers for some part of the cost of injuries, or in some cases of occupational diseases, received by employees in the course of their work. clients. Beech Street provides health care services for roughly 1nies and third-party administrators. About Healtheon Healtheon, based in Palo Alto, Calif., isolutions replace costly, labor-intensive, trads organizations and geographic boundaries. Healns and providers. Healtheon was founded in 19 Debra Jones, communications consultant 650/326-1868 jdebra@ix.netcom.com or Identity Group for Beec idgoc@aol.com KEYWORD: CALIFORage. URL URL in full Uniform Resource Locator Address of a resource on the Internet. The resource can be any type of file stored on a server, such as a Web page, a text file, a graphics file, or an application program. : http://www.businesswire.com |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion