EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Jan. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Computer Sciences Corporation today announced that five U.S. healthcare consulting organizations have licensed the Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups Predictive Model (ACG-PM) software. Encompass Medical Management, Salem Health Solutions, Wakely Consulting Group and two other providers of healthcare management services will use ACG-PM to improve the performance of health plans offered by their employer-group clients.
ACG-PM is a component of the ACG Case-Mix System, the nation’s most widely used and evaluated population-based risk-adjustment tool. Developed and maintained by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the tool is distributed exclusively by CSC in the U.S. ACG-PM will help the five organizations improve their health plan clients’ ability to identify and focus on individuals who are candidates for disease management programs, thereby improving care delivery and reducing medical costs.
In comparing how various patient populations use healthcare resources, the software factors in the morbidity or “illness burden” of patient populations, so healthcare providers, insurers and health maintenance organizations can describe or predict a population’s past or future use of a health plan and related costs. ACG analysis reports can then influence actuarial and healthcare management policies and decisions, resulting in greater operational efficiency and quality of care.
“Wakely reviewed more than a half-dozen risk-adjustment products,” said Brian Weible, vice president of Wakely Consulting Group. “We chose the ACG System based on the explanatory power of the system’s algorithms, the clinical support provided by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the more than 10 years of market testing the system has undergone.”
“By aligning with Johns Hopkins, CSC has been able to transfer valuable ACG case-mix technology from the laboratory to the marketplace,” said Steve Sabino, vice president of CSC’s Health Plan Solutions organization. “With the ACG System, we can offer our clients a tool that will help increase the efficiency and equity of care for millions of patients.”
For more than 25 years, CSC has delivered applications and outsourcing services that help health plans, preferred provider organizations, third-party administrators and physician practices improve efficiency, reduce operational costs, increase speed to market and improve customer service and care management. CSC’s applications, and its application service provider and business process outsourcing services support more than 300 healthcare clients, representing 30 million covered lives and 230 million claims annually.
About Encompass
Encompass Medical Management provides analysis and mathematic modeling services to employer health plans, consultants, third party administrators, insurance companies and others. Encompass has developed proprietary methods of analyzing medical and pharmacy claims to identify the factors driving individual health plan cost. Encompass specializes in services for predicting and modeling health costs of employer populations. Encompass also provides services for analysis of healthcare provider performance on both economic and clinical outcomes. Encompass is based in Austin, Texas, and can be found on the Web at http://www.encompassmm.com/.
About Salem Health Solutions
Salem Health Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Novant Health, is headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The company is a clinically focused, healthcare information management organization that consistently delivers significant return on investment to employers, coalitions, payers, providers, medical management vendors and life sciences companies. Salem Health Solutions helps its clients to improve healthcare quality and reduce costs by identifying cost drivers within their population, recommending action, and measuring the results of those interventions. Changing behavior of members and providers to affect the root cause of increasing health costs is the focus of the data warehousing and analytic company. More information is available on the company’s Web site at http://www.salem-health.com/.
About Wakely Consulting Group
Wakely Consulting Group, based in Clearwater, Fla., provides professional actuarial services to the healthcare industry. Wakely Consulting Group actuaries provide a comprehensive, full-service array of expert actuarial services and consulting to the medical and health care sectors, including regulatory services, product pricing, financial statement support, strategy and business management and special services. More information is available on the company’s Web site at http://www.wakelyconsulting.com/.
About CSC
Founded in 1959, Computer Sciences Corporation is a leading global information technology (IT) services company. CSC’s mission is to provide customers in industry and government with solutions crafted to meet their specific challenges and enable them to profit from the advanced use of technology.
With approximately 91,000 employees, CSC provides innovative solutions for customers around the world by applying leading technologies and CSC’s own advanced capabilities. These include systems design and integration; IT and business process outsourcing; applications software development; Web and application hosting; and management consulting. Headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., CSC reported revenue of $15.3 billion for the 12 months ended Oct. 1, 2004. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at http://www.csc.com/.
Computer Sciences Corporation
CONTACT: Jackie Van Erp Vice President, Marketing, Financial ServicesGroup, +1-512-275-5844, jvanerp@csc.com; or Janet Herin, Media Relations,Corporate, +1-310-615-1693, jherin@csc.com, both of Computer SciencesCorporation
Web site: http://www.encompassmm.com/
Web site: http://www.salem-health.com/
Web site: http://www.wakelyconsulting.com/
Web site: http://www.csc.com/