Providence St. Joseph Health, one of the nation's largest health systems, today announced at the 2019 Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, Fla. that it has acquired Lumedic, a next-generation revenue cycle management platform based on blockchain technology. Providence St. Joseph Health will be the first integrated provider-payer system to establish a scalable blockchain platform to transform claims processing and enhance interoperability between providers and payers.
“New technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and machine learning give us an opportunity to view the complexities of today’s health systems through a different lens,” said Venkat Bhamidipati, Providence St. Joseph Health chief financial officer. “Our acquisition of Lumedic’s innovative platform is yet another example of how we are pursuing all avenues of transformation, allowing us to redirect unnecessary spend towards either patient savings or care.”
Reducing inefficiencies in revenue cycle management (RCM) has long been a challenge for the health care industry. Revenue cycle inefficiencies were responsible for more than $500 billion in U.S. health care costs in 2018 alone, largely due to industry complexities and manual processes, according to a McKinsey & Company analysis. Traditional health system and hospital revenue cycle processes frequently rely on physical correspondence and fax machines for sending medical records, legacy systems for data storage, and employees who spend hours calling insurers on the status of claims.
Based on blockchain, Lumedic builds on distributed ledger technology, smart contracts, and machine learning to deploy an efficient, secure, and trusted end-to-end platform for revenue cycle management. Payers and providers connecting to Lumedic’s intelligent network will be able to seamlessly share trusted information and collaborate on integrated business processes, reducing inefficiencies in the health care system and improving the patient experience.
Providence St. Joseph Health has acquired Lumedic’s assets and team to form a new company that will maintain the Lumedic brand and operating vision. Lumedic will work with Providence St. Joseph Health to explore partnerships with providers, insurers, and others in the health care field.
Quotes
“Providence St. Joseph Health welcomes the Lumedic team and the focus on substantially improving the coordination of financial transactions between payers and providers. By disrupting these often cumbersome processes ourselves, we strive to lower administrative costs for both parties while getting deeper insight into the financial experience of patients and the ways we can simplify the process for them,” said Rhonda Medows, M.D., Providence St. Joseph Health president of population health and chief executive officer, Ayin Health Solutions.
"Providence St. Joseph Health has a long history of innovation and this is an opportunity to ease the transition to patient-driven interoperability while improving operations and diversifying revenue streams. The Lumedic platform will reduce administrative burden and enable resources to shift to improved patient care, more patient-centric billing experiences, and lower costs,” said Mike Butler, Providence St. Joseph Health president of operations and strategy.
About Providence St. Joseph Health
Providence St. Joseph Health is a national, not-for-profit Catholic health system comprising a diverse family of organizations and driven by a belief that health is a human right. With 51 hospitals, 829 physician clinics, senior services, supportive housing, and many other health and educational services, the health system and its partners employ more than 119,000 caregivers serving communities across seven states – Alaska, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, and Washington with system offices based in Renton, Wash., and Irvine, Calif.
About Lumedic
Lumedic is a Seattle-based healthcare technology company transforming revenue cycle management processes for modern payers and providers. From eligibility to pre-authorization to billing, Lumedic offers an end-to-end platform and intelligent network built on blockchain technology that embraces patient, payer, and provider interactions to drive more efficient operations and make smarter data-driven decisions. Learn more at https://lumedic.io/.
