MEDecision Updates Clinical Programs to Strengthen Clinical Excellence

WAYNE, PA--(Marketwire - Aug 8, 2011) - MEDecision, Inc., the leading provider of collaborative health management solutions, today announced that its 2011 URAC accredited Alineo^® Clinical Programs are now generally available. An essential component of a successful care management strategy, the annually updated Clinical Programs consist of standardized case and disease management assessments developed by MEDecision to drive quality and consistency of care, effectively reducing healthcare costs.

With more than two million articles published in 20,000 medical journals annually, it's challenging to keep up with the latest important updates to medical protocols and innovations. MEDecision's Clinical Programs combine evidence-based medicine, best practices and national guidelines to save health plans time and resources by providing fingertip access to the most current medical information available. Using both comprehensive and focused assessment tools, care managers are able to determine treatment opportunities, create individualized, optimal plans of care, engage members and close gaps in care to effectively reduce costs.

"MEDecision devotes a team of full-time registered nurses to the development and maintenance of its Clinical Programs and invests in quality assurance validation by third-party organizations like URAC and NCQA," Deborah M. Gage, MEDecision president and chief executive officer, said. "Using MEDecision's collaborative health management tools, health plan executives can be confident their care managers are armed with the most up-to-date, clinically sound medicine available to treat their members."

New features of the 2011 Clinical Programs include web-based integration to 20 Emmi® programs -- interactive patient education materials that engage members in their care and improve adherence to treatment regimens -- as well as medication lists reviewed by external registered pharmacists, and new sections focused on provider connectivity and wellness. Intuitive branching logic allows care managers to use a single questionnaire to manage up to 99 co-morbid conditions -- enhancing efficiency and productivity of the end users. While the platform hosts highly sophisticated, complex clinical data, the Clinical Programs tools are streamlined and easy to use in the day-to-day care management of members.

"Care management is an area that relies on technology and a high-touch approach with members to ensure that high-quality, appropriate and safe healthcare is being delivered," Joanne Galimi, research vice president, Gartner, Inc., said. "Incorporating accredited clinical programs into a care management strategy supports automation to reduce the number of actions care managers need to perform to create effective care plans and proactively engage with members."

"As U.S. healthcare transitions to pay-for-performance, preventative care models, it's essential that health plans have the right standardized tools with the highest clinical intelligence to identify members for preventative interventions and treatments," Ms. Gage said. "Our Clinical Programs are available today as part of MEDecision's care management platform and will continue to evolve to integrate with additional platforms and strategies. MEDecision is committed to continuously providing the best clinical excellence to our customers to improve health outcomes, while working to stem the growing cost of care in this country."

For more information about MEDecision, please visit www.MEDecision.com. Follow the company on Twitter at @MEDecision and on Facebook at www.MEDecision.com/Facebook.

About MEDecision

MEDecision's contribution to the healthcare industry is a powerful platform that delivers meaningful data to inform the most important healthcare transaction: patient care. We start with a philosophy that patients, providers and payers are all driving towards better health outcomes and that this common interest dictates the need for collaborative working environments. Then, we apply more than 22 years of experience, $85+ million in research and development and the strongest clinical knowledge to deliver the MEDecision collaborative health management platform, which includes Nexalign®, a health decision support service that applies analytics to information gathered from multiple sources to foster better business and clinical decisions on a patient's behalf, Alineo®, a health management platform for delivering outcome-driven case, disease, utilization and behavioral health management, and InFrame™, a set of tools to facilitate the health and performance management processes for physicians and accountable care organizations. For more information, visit www.MEDecision.com.

MEDecision is a trademark of MEDecision, Inc. The MEDecision logo and product names are also trademarks or registered trademarks of MEDecision, Inc. Other product and brand names are trademarks of their respective owners.