Avandel Healthcare Selects ThinkMed to Support Early Identification and Medical Management of Patients with Catastrophic Diseases
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ThinkMed, LLC announced today that Avandel Healthcare, Inc. of Lynnwood, Wash. has selected ThinkMed Expert, a medical management data mining, clinical logic and decision support system, as the foundation for Avandel's Early Warning System. This system analyzes and interprets health care claims, encounter, demographic and provider data to identify patients who will benefit from Avandel's Catastrophic Care Assistance Program.

ThinkMed ( http://www.thinkmed.com ) offers patient-centric population health management software that empowers health care organizations to become more proactive and systematic in coordinating care for catastrophic, complex and chronically ill patients, as well as those who require prevention and screening interventions. Avandel ( http://www.avandel.com ) offers integrated disease management programs and risk transfer products for various catastrophic medical events including complex neonatal care, severe burns, multiple severe injuries, and organ and tissue transplants.

"Using ThinkMed's highly-sophisticated approach to patient identification and stratification, we can interpret data in a clinically meaningful way to identify patients who will benefit most from our services, both clinically and financially," said Ned Goodhue, Avandel's president and CEO. "We are confident that the incorporation of ThinkMed Expert into the Avandel Early Warning System will allow us to intervene earlier in the clinical progression of various diseases. This, in turn, will allow us to reduce the cost, severity and frequency of catastrophic medical events for our customers."

Avandel will use ThinkMed Expert to obtain a medically relevant profiling of its clients' patient populations for early identification of at-risk patients and stratification of patients into clinically relevant groups. The process begins by linking a client's disparate data into a multidimensional database that is structured around the patient rather than the organization's financial needs. With this patient-centric data organization in place, Avandel applies ThinkMed's proprietary clinical rule-based logic to the data. This physician-developed logic is comprised of thousands of database queries that search the data to identify, profile and monitor patients who are at risk for clinical deterioration, financial escalation and/or increased utilization.

"With the cost of catastrophic care representing nearly one-fourth of medical spending in the U.S., Avandel has created superior product offerings which allow its clients to minimize both clinical and financial risk," says Drew Palin, MD, ThinkMed's chairman and CEO. "ThinkMed is perfectly suited to meet the needs of progressive organizations such as Avandel which understands and seizes strategic opportunities. Avandel is strong in its ability to simultaneously address both clinical and financial demands by becoming more systematic, proactive and patient-centric in their approach to care delivery."

ThinkMed offers desk-top access to both population- and patient-specific data. Today's risk-bearing organizations need this type of data to systematically plan, implement and monitor population health management strategies. ThinkMed links ICD9, CPT, NDC, HCPCS, demographic, provider and other data into a patient-centric, multidimensional relational database. ThinkMed Expert provides a medically relevant interpretation of this data using its physician-developed rule-based logic. This logic is comprised of thousands of database queries that search the data to identify, profile and monitor at-risk patients. On average, ThinkMed's logic identifies high-risk/high-cost patients when as little as 10% to 30% of total expected costs are incurred. This "predictive" capability provides a window of opportunity for implementing proactive and targeted management interventions. ThinkMed clients include American Medical Security (AMS), CareWise, Inc., Fortis Health, Heads Up, Grand Valley Health Plan, Oxford Health Plans, Shopko/ProVMed, and Wellmark BlueCross BlueShield of Iowa.

The Avandel Catastrophic Care Assistance Program offers specialized medical management programs and risk transfer products for complex neonatal care, severe burns, multiple severe injuries, and organ and tissue transplants. This includes population-based wellness care management programs which reduce the cost, severity, and frequency of these events through patient and provider education. More than two million individuals in 47 states now have access to the Avandel program. The company's mission is to achieve excellent outcomes for catastrophic medical events while providing superior customer service and quantifiable financial and risk management advantages to its clients.