Access Innovations, Inc., a leader in data integrity and content creation, has announced the Access Innovations Integrity Initiative (AI³), a suite of tools and services for quality assurance and validation of medical coding.

Medical administrative costs in the U.S. are dramatically higher than in other developed countries. A study published in July in Health Affairs finds that interacting with payers costs each U.S. physician an average of more than $80,000 every year. When the system works, it provides greater quality of care and controls the cost of care, but the administrative expenses may be greater than the savings. As health costs expert Liz Borkowski, a research associate at the George Washington University School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, asks, “Are the actual and potential benefits of having many competing health insurance plans worth spending nearly four times as much Canada’s single-payer system does on this one component of administrative costs alone?”

AI³ can lower those administrative costs. An initial consultation leads to the development of an automated audit-trigger analysis, identifying inefficiencies and inaccuracies based on records, notes, or other supplied data. A rules-based approach allows for the analysis of dynamic data sets, unlike a purely statistical approach, which quickly becomes suboptimal as more data is entered. The system can be used to quickly and accurately validate medical coding or to locate errors in existing documentation. The cost savings are impressive.

A recent article in InformationWeek highlights the importance of machine aided indexing (MAI), which is used in AI³, to improve precision and recall as well as reduce statistical drift in analytics. In addition, tight taxonomies, the basis of AI³, are already in use in specialized applications on smart phones as a key factor in achieving fast, accurate searches.

The Access Innovations Integrity Initiative is not just for physicians, hospitals, and their data service providers. It also includes tools that give auditors and insurers the information management tools they need to quickly identify areas of noncompliance or suspicious activity.

“We are dedicated to productivity and cost savings as a company. This new application of our long-standing tool set enables a radical departure from other less consistent and accurate tools. These are the tools used in scholarly publishing and other information activities for many years. Applying ANSI standard-compliant Data Harmony tools to the health arena, coupled with our support of automated coding accuracy, means cost savings as well as increased precision” says Marjorie M.K. Hlava, president of Access Innovations.

For more information about the Access Innovations Integrity Initiative, visit Access
Innovations.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.