BCBS South Carolina's Companion HealthCare Selects MEDSTAT

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of South Carolina's Companion HealthCare signed a three-year license agreement for MEDSTAT Advantage Suite for managing the cost, use, and quality of health services.

MEDSTAT Advantage Suite is the 5th generation of decision support systems from The MEDSTAT Group. The system seamlessly integrates a data warehouse, analytic methodologies, and software to provide a powerful and flexible decision support solution.

"MEDSTAT Advantage Suite provides us with an all-in-one solution ideal for tackling today's healthcare challenges," said Tim Vaughn, chief financial officer of Companion HealthCare. "It will provide more power and flexibility to our analysts, which is critical to our ability to identify and understand complex healthcare trends affecting our clinical and financial performance."

Companion HealthCare will use MEDSTAT Advantage Suite for provider profiling, disease management, and comparing care provided to clinical practice guidelines. "The MEDSTAT methods for grouping claims into complete episodes of care and adjusting the data for varying patient severity are particularly valuable to us for their ability to drive performance improvement and improve the quality of care provided to our members," added Vaughn.

Companion HealthCare was the first HMO offered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of South Carolina and today provides healthcare to some 133,000 members. Its mission is to deliver comprehensive healthcare coverage for members.

"Companion HealthCare joins a growing list of managed care organizations, leading corporations, and state governments that are using MEDSTAT data warehousing and decision support solutions for more informed decision making about health benefits and services," said Shelby Solomon, general manager at MEDSTAT.

The MEDSTAT Group www.medstat.com is a health information company that provides decision support systems, market intelligence, benchmark databases, and research for managing the purchase, administration, and delivery of health services and benefits. It serves nearly 1,000 organizations including many of the nation's leading employers, providers, pharmaceutical companies, government organizations, and health plans and insurance companies. Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., MEDSTAT has a 20-year track record of delivering results for customers through innovative products, superior customer service, and outstanding people.

Contact The MEDSTAT Group, Andree Joyaux, 734-913-3295, andree.joyaux@medstat.com.