Here’s a story about another document imaging vendor being acquired by a medical records company. Just more evidence of how HIPAA has been driving the adoption of imaging in medical records applications-probably the hottest vertical space for imaging right now.
ChartOne, Inc. Acquires eWebHealth; Acquisition Forms Healthcare’s Most Comprehensive Set of Technology Products and Services for Automating Health Information Management
SAN JOSE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–July 12, 2004–ChartOne, Inc., one of the nation’s oldest and largest suppliers of medical record management services and technology, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire InterTech Information Management, Inc. (d/b/a eWebHealth) of Alpharetta, Georgia. eWebHealth, formerly eWebCoding, offers a range of Web-based applications designed to expedite the secure delivery of medical records over the Internet. These applications will be added to ChartOne’s existing suite of technology and service offerings, allowing the company to offer the industry’s most comprehensive set of solutions for electronic health information management.
With over a thousand customers, ChartOne is a leading provider of patient chart management solutions to the healthcare industry. eWebHealth has nearly 250 hospital and clinic customers using its remote coding and Web-based document imaging solutions. The combination gives these customers as well as other healthcare organizations the most flexible array of options for beginning or continuing their transition to electronic health information management.
“In just four years, eWebHealth has built a best-of-breed reputation for delivering innovative technology coupled with superior customer service,” said Brian Cahill, CEO of ChartOne. “Our shared philosophies and commitment to our customers make this combination a very natural and exciting progression in our evolution.”
“We set out to provide applications for medical record access using the application service provider (ASP) model, the first of which was eWebCoding,” explained Mike Kelly, president and CEO of eWebHealth. “Our customers, realizing its value and potential, asked us to develop additional solutions to assist them in improving revenue cycle management, record access and other document management functions. While evaluating the growing needs of our customers, we saw the benefits of joining with ChartOne and bringing to market a powerful set of combined tools.”
The combined ChartOne/eWebHealth offerings provide secure, anytime-anywhere access to medical records to authenticated users: clinicians, billing and other health information management staff. Specific products automate emergency department medical record access, coding, release of information, disclosure reporting and chart completion, including collection of physicians’ electronic signatures. Web access to medical records has the additional advantage of enabling scarce staff resources, such as coders, to perform their functions from home, a capability that significantly enhances job satisfaction and increases retention.
“Bringing these complementary product sets together into one comprehensive set allows our customers to automate each phase of the health information management process in the way that makes the most sense for them,” said Cahill. “The result is major improvements in workflow efficiency and communication, which in turn benefits both patient care and the healthcare organization’s revenue cycle.”
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