NEW YORK, May 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Care1st Health Plan, one of California’s largest Medicaid managed care plans, has selected Health Management Systems, Inc. to provide coordination of benefits services. Under a one-year contract with annual renewals thereafter, HMS will identify and recover expenditures that are the responsibility of other parties, such as private insurers and Medicare.
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Care1st provides health benefits to nearly 200,000 members of California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, through a contract with the Local Initiative Health Authority for Los Angeles County (L.A. Care).
HMS, a wholly owned subsidiary of HMS Holdings Corp. , helps Medicaid and other government health care programs contain costs by recovering expenditures from liable third-party sources of health insurance. In the past year, HMS has expanded its services to Medicaid managed care plans, drawing on its experience in 30 states. To date, HMS has recovered a total of more than $2 billion for its clients.
Medicaid, the federal/state health care initiative for low-income individuals and families, will cost the nation more than $300 billion in 2004, and is the most rapidly growing component of spending by states. Medi-Cal is the largest state Medicaid program, with 6.8 million members. Of these, approximately 53 percent are enrolled in managed care plans.
HMS President William Lucia commented: “The addition of Care1st as a client accelerates the growth of HMS’s Medicaid managed care business, and exemplifies the value proposition driving it. Increasingly, Medicaid plans are challenged to control cost, and realize the need for expertise and resources that a revenue recovery specialist can add. Care1st has proven itself a leader by adopting this strategy, and the HMS team is proud to be joining with Care1st in the effort.”
ABOUT HMS
Health Management Systems, Inc. is a national leader in revenue recovery and cost containment for government health care programs. HMS has recovered more than $2 billion from third parties and other funding sources on behalf of its clients, and today has active contracts in more than 20 states. HMS’s solutions are non-duplicative and require no up-front funding or additional agency resources. HMS, a wholly owned subsidiary of HMS Holdings Corp. (listed on NASDAQ under the symbol HMSY), is headquartered in New York and operates offices nationwide.
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CONTACT: Investor Relations: Laura Jo Snyder-Cruz, +1-212-857-5986,ir@hmsy.com, or Media: William Hall, +1-212-857-5407, whall@hmsy.com, both forHealth Management Systems, Inc.
Web site: http://www.hmsy.com/
