Ingenix looks to buy A-Life Medical

Mary Stevens | | Health Exec | Economics
Ingenix, UnitedHealth Group’s health IT subsidiary, will acquire A-Life Medical, a San Diego-based provider of computer-assisted coding (CAC) products and services for the healthcare industry, for an undisclosed amount.

A-Life will become part of the Ingenix Health Care Delivery business, according to Ingenix, of Eden Prairie, Minn. The acquisition follows the alliance Ingenix and A-Life established last year to develop coding technologies for the healthcare market.

Ingenix provides medical coding research and encoding tools for hospitals and physician practices. A-Life Medical provides CAC software. Together, the companies will develop coding technologies for all billing services providers, physician practices and inpatient and outpatient providers, as well as for more medical specialties, according to Ingenix.

A-Life’s LifeCode, a natural language processing (NLP) technology, assists medical coders and clinical abstractors through software applications, including Actus, A-Life’s CAC product. LifeCode reads clinical documentation, deciphers the meaning and context of words within medical records and correctly identifies diagnoses and procedures provided during patient care. The software then recommends appropriate and compliant ICD-9 and CPT-4 codes. Coding staff can confirm the suggested codes, conduct additional research to validate them or adjust them.

This acquisition is the fourth for Ingenix in 2010. the company has acquirred Picis, Executive Health Resources and Axolotl.

Mary Stevens

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