Siemens Healthineers plans to expand its population health management (PHM) portfolio with the acquisition of Medicalis Corp. based in San Francisco and Kitchener, Ontario. Medicalis is a leading provider of clinical decision support (CDS) solutions at the point-of-order entry, imaging workflow (IW) management, and referral management (RM).
“The mission of Siemens Healthineers is to be the trusted partner enabling health systems and healthcare providers worldwide to improve medical outcomes and reduce costs,” says Matthias Platsch, head of services at Siemens Healthineers. “The addition of Medicalis’ technology solutions to the Siemens Healthineers portfolio complements and supports our offerings in population health management and value-based healthcare, a key priority for our ongoing expansion through our services business.”
The newly-acquired PHM portfolio aims to extend the Siemens Healthineers strategy for value-based healthcare across the health system enterprise and hospital departmental levels.
In the short term, the solutions developed by Medicalis are expected to address the immediate need for consolidating providers to orchestrate and standardize their imaging workflow and to achieve compliance with the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, expected to become effective on January 1, 2018. The PAMA mandates consultation of appropriateness CDS at the point of order for certain advanced imaging tests.
According to Siemens, the solutions will enable providers to achieve PAMA compliance while retaining control over the content, allowing them to move beyond simple compliance toward truly establishing an evolving standard of care based on evidence and direct health system experience.
“The acquisition of Medicalis will allow us to offer healthcare providers a powerful solution to define, implement, monitor, and evolve their own standard of care for their diagnostic service line,” says Robert Taylor, head of digital services population health management at Siemens Healthineers. “We are excited to support our customers with these innovative tools to remove the variability from key high-impact disease states, to create standardized diagnostic pathways which enhance outcomes, control costs, and when combined with intelligent referral management, improve the patient experience overall.”
The solutions developed by Medicalis allow networks of hospitals to improve physician productivity, manage patient referrals, and scheduling to enhance the relationship with the patient and ensure clinically appropriate imaging and tests to reduce inappropriate utilization. Currently, seven of the top 25 Health Systems from Massachusetts to California use solutions developed by Medicalis to increase the quality of care they offer to patients.
“We are eager to be joining Siemens Healthineers and believe that this is a strong fit for our company because of our shared values and pioneering heritage,” says Oran Muduroglu, CEO of Medicalis Corp. “With Siemens Healthineers, we will be able to broaden the context of our decision support, workflow, and referral management to utilize the full spectrum of diagnostic and therapeutic areas in which Siemens Healthineers operates, to address care gaps, streamline workflow, and help improve the overall experience of healthcare.”
The agreement to acquire the San Francisco, CA, USA and Kitchener, ON, Canada-based company by Siemens Healthineers was signed in April 2017. Terms of the transaction are not disclosed. The closing of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions.
