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U.S. Billing And Claims Management Systems Healthcare Sees A Shift In Focus To Care Management Solution

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 November 2006, 09:00 CST

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c45775) has announced the addition of U.S. Billing and Claims Management Systems Market for Healthcare - Payers and Providers to their offering.

Billing and Claims IT Systems Become Secondary Solutions:

Billing and claims management systems emerged out of the growing need for healthcare providers to find solutions that could help them manage rising costs of healthcare as well as increase their overall administrative efficiency. The range of solutions developed by IT vendors to address these needs helped provider practices become more fully automated and integrated into virtually every aspect of the value chain. However, recent trends reveal that healthcare providers focus is moving away from such systems to integrated electronic medical records (EMR) solutions, which they believe form the crux of the IT value chain. This is causing drastic changes within the billing and claims IT markets and these systems are being increasingly considered an offshoot of EMR solutions. The primary driver for this shift is the comprehensive nature of EMRs, which consolidate patients personal and administrative information, health history, prescriptions, treatments, and conditions. From an IT vendor's perspective, this shift is critical because it significantly affects product positioning and development as well as industry partnerships and merger and acquisition strategies.

This Frost & Sullivan research service is an in-depth analysis of the billing and claims IT markets in the United States. The study's analysis of changing market trends helps in identifying major growth opportunities and understanding the future direction of the markets, while its detailed competitive profiling can help vendors develop appropriate strategies for increasing market share.

Shift in Focus to Care Management Solution

Billing and claims modules have become more or less standard and no longer offer payers or providers the compelling differentiation that they used to. The current perception of these modules is that they form an important part of a systems architecture upon which a variety of care management solutions are built and/or integrated. Currently, healthcare IT markets are focused on comprehensive care management solutions that serve patients, payers, and practitioners in several key ways by facilitating communication, increasing patient compliance, reducing medical errors, and tracking disease progression as well as patient behaviour, notes the analyst of this research service. However, billing and claims modules are expected to continue to form an important part of these new technologies as they work at shaping the future integrated health system.

Healthcare payers and providers are channelling funds into purchasing these IT solutions at the expense of billing and claims solutions, an investment pattern that is expected to continue for some time. Competition in the markets is likely to remain intense, but is expected to increasingly center on integrated rather than stand-alone IT solutions. Thus, IT vendors that concentrate only on billing and claims solutions are likely to lose out to those that sell comprehensive solutions, which include billing and claims modules.

Integration Key to Future of Industry

Integration is definitely the way forward in the healthcare IT industry. While almost all vendors sell stand-alone modules, a variety of systems are usually bundled and sold as a product suite or a comprehensive solution. This is especially true of billing and claims modules, which are typically incorporated into a total business solution or office management product that handles a range of administrative tasks from scheduling to revenue analysis.

As health systems develop and the federal government continues to push for the construction of a national health information network, the integration of billing and claims with EMRs as well as other modules is expected to become essential, remarks the analyst. However, EMRs, picture archiving and communications systems (PACs) and care management solutions are likely to continue attracting attention even on their own.

Benefits of this Service

Major Growth Opportunities

Market and Product Analysis

Market Sector

Whats Included

Billing and Claims Management Systems for Providers:

- Industry drivers, restraints, and challenges - Strategies, market trends, competitive and financial profiles - End-user demand - Trends in license and service pricing Billing and Claims Management Systems for Health Plans:

- Industry drivers, restraints, and challenges - Strategies, market trends, competitive and financial profiles - End-user demand - Trends in license and service pricing

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c45775

Source: Business Wire

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