Siemens Healthineers announced that it is acquiring San Francisco-based Medicalis Corporation to expand the tools it can offer hospital and health systems working to manage population health initiatives and move toward value-based care.

Medicalis develops imaging decision support, workflow and referral management technologies. Siemens officials said their addition to its portfolio will help improve its clients ability to tackle population health initiatives at cross-enterprise and departmental levels.

Specifically, Siemens said Medicalis' tools will help providers comply with the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 – slated to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2018 – which mandates consultation at the point of order to assess the appropriateness of certain advanced imaging tests. 

[Also: Clinical decision support: no longer just a nice-to-have]

Beyond compliance, officials said clinicians can use the software to  orchestrate and standardize imaging workflow, enabling evidence-based best practices.

"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.

The new tools, he said, can "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."

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

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