MedAssets Announces General Availability of New Access Integrity Suite, a Comprehensive Platform for Front-End Revenue Cycle Processes

MedAssets (NASDAQ: MDAS) today announced the general availability of its Access Integrity suite, a comprehensive, next-generation integrated technology offering designed to help healthcare providers improve cash collections, reduce front-end denials and improve efficiencies during patient registration. With increasingly changing reimbursement models placing more payment liability with the patient, MedAssets has brought to market a timely, competitive solution that unifies disparate systems to remove complexity for patient access staff. Intelligent process automation and workflows presented through Web-based tools drive staff actions and deliver easy access to critical data required to financially clear patients prior to service. The result is a flexible, affordable solution to significantly improve an increasingly critical area of the hospital that impacts bad debt and patient satisfaction.

A Central Point for Financial Clearance

According to Greg Strobel, president, Revenue Cycle Management, MedAssets, "The June U.S. Patient Access study by CapSite reported that 23 percent of U.S. hospitals plan to invest in eligibility and benefits verification tools, with further investments planned in other patient access solutions. We are using our proven, Web-based revenue cycle technologies and expertise to address critical, complex healthcare processes that directly impact the bottom line,” said Strobel. ”Our Access Integrity suite is designed to unify all patient access accounts into an integrated workflow that distributes accounts to the appropriate persons to prompt the right action at the right time in order to improve efficiency and financial performance. In combination with the support of our Revenue Cycle Services patient access experts, MedAssets is well-equipped to deliver an integrated solution to promote timely financial clearance and an optimized patient experience.”

Components of the Next-Generation Access Integrity Suite

The Access Integrity suite builds upon the company’s existing patient access solutions that have a demonstrated track record of helping more than 500 MedAssets clients with patient bill estimation to improve cash collections and Medicare advance beneficiary notification to reduce bad debt. The access suite’s central workflow solution, Access Manager, distributes, prioritizes, assigns and tracks all pre-registration activities necessary for patient financial clearance in concert with:

• CarePricer® - Enables hospitals to provide reliable and easy-to-understand pricing transparency to patients during or prior to point-of-care. Accurate patient liability estimates improve patient satisfaction and increase cash collection earlier in the revenue cycle.
• ABN Manager® - Verifies compliance with all Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) medical necessity rules. ABN Manager (Advance Beneficiary Notification) facilitates pre-service validation of coverage decisions to reduce write-offs or bad debt.
• Eligibility Integrity - Web-based application that helps providers to verify and validate the patient’s insurance eligibility and coverage for services to be rendered prior to point-of-care.
• Registration Integrity - Helps providers "get it right from the start” by validating registration information prior to billing in order to reduce registration errors. With the majority of required billing data originating at registration, it has been estimated that more than half of all claim denials could be prevented at registration.
• PatientSecure™ Biometric Patient Identification System - Verifies the right care is given to the right patient by confirming each patient’s identity at point-of-care. Using a scanner and cutting-edge palm vein pattern recognition biometrics, PatientSecure stops duplicate medical records, and drives seamless patient enrollment and authentication.

All components of the suite are offered via software as a service (SaaS), improving operational efficiencies and reducing technology support requirements. Currently, 15 MedAssets clients are implementing the new Access Integrity suite’s intelligence and workflow capabilities.

"As a long-time MedAssets client, we are thrilled to see the evolution of the patient access solutions offered by MedAssets,” said John Hegarty, director of Patient Access at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut. "We already have started recognizing early improvements in point-of-service cash collection with our implementation of Access Manager, Eligibility Integrity, and CarePricer. We look forward to quantifying more benefits as we go-live on more products in the Access Integrity suite.”

The next phase of the Access Integrity solution suite roadmap for 2012 is eCash, which makes it easy for patients to pre-pay for services and pay bills online. Staff can use eCash to collect deposits, copayments, coinsurance and deductibles. Patient Access leaders can set up target collection goals to increase upfront collections, reducing uncompensated care and the cost to collect. The solution will accept payment collection from any point of patient access within the health system, and will post payments automatically to the hospital’s patient accounting system.

About Stamford Hospital

Stamford Hospital is a not-for-profit provider of comprehensive healthcare services in lower Fairfield County. The mission of Stamford Hospital is to provide, together with its physicians, a broad range of high quality health and wellness services focused on the needs of our communities. Stamford Hospital is a member of the Planetree Alliance, a group of hospitals nationwide focused on patient-centered care. Stamford Hospital is affiliated with the New York Presbyterian Health System and is a major teaching affiliate of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. For more information, please visit www.stamfordhospital.org.

About MedAssets

MedAssets (NASDAQ: MDAS) partners with healthcare providers to improve their financial strength by implementing revenue cycle, spend and clinical resource management solutions that help capture revenue, control cost, improve margins and cash flow, increase regulatory compliance, and optimize operational efficiency. More than 180 health systems, 4,000 hospitals and 90,000 non-acute healthcare providers rely on MedAssets. The company currently manages $45 billion in supply spend and touches more than $316 billion in total patient revenue annually through its revenue cycle solutions. For more information, call 1-888-883-6332, e-mail solutions@medassets.com or visit http://www.medassets.com.

MDAS/b