HEALTH PLAN Solution #1

Access to Patient Data

Is Your Health Plan Collecting Patient Laboratory Results from Your Laboratory Network?

The laboratory industry accounts for less than 5% of the total cost of healthcare; however, laboratory result data affects greater than 70% of medical decisions and makes up 94% of the objective data in the Patient Health Record (Regan M, Forsman R. Disease). This evidence indicates that the medical laboratory should be a powerful driver in any solution to control healthcare cost while maintaining the high standards and access that Americans are accustomed to. However, the collection of patient laboratory results is a difficult process; there are many obstacles... here are just a few of them:

• Excluding physician office labs, there are more than 15,000 independent and hospital labs in the U.S.

• Number and Type of Lab Information Systems (LIS)

• Proprietary database formats

• Costs: $5000-$20,000 per interface

• No incentive for laboratories to participate; there is no ROI for this activity

• LOINC (http://loinc.org/background)

Halfpenny Technologies Data Sharing Solution

Halfpenny Technologies develop data interfaces with clinical laboratories for the purpose of delivering laboratory results to health plans for the members associated with those plans. Interfaces developed by Halfpenny Technologies are advantageous to both the health plan and to the laboratory:

• Cost avoidance to the laboratory: An interface to Halfpenny eliminates the need to interface to multiple health plans

• Implementation cost to the health plan is low: Halfpenny's fees are below health plan cost for internal development

To learn more about the bottom line benefits that a managed laboratory network can offer to your Health Plan, contact us today.