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3M today announced that customers of Siemens Medical Solutions' Soarian health information solution will have access to the latest medical necessity intelligence through a strategic alliance with 3M Health Information Systems Division, a leading provider of advanced coding and compliance software and content. Siemens will embed 3M Medical Necessity Dictionaries in Soarian, enabling customers to detect coding and compliance issues during scheduling and registration, and to verify post-service claim compliance.

"Maintaining Medicare compliance continues to be a significant administrative and financial challenge for hospitals," said Brenna Quinn, vice president, Healthcare IT Division, Siemens Medical Solutions. "Through this agreement, we are combining the workflow-engineered strength of Soarian with 3M's comprehensive medical necessity content to provide our Soarian customers with a premier solution for their Medicare compliance challenges."

With access to 3M Medical Necessity Dictionaries within Soarian, Siemens customers will be able to validate medical necessity before service delivery by identifying charges that are not covered by Medicare. Correcting these issues prior to service delivery reduces payment rejections and denials, helps ensure compliance, and ultimately improves reimbursement for hospitals.

"3M has a long history of providing medical necessity intelligence for a wide range of health care applications - from scheduling, registration and billing, all the way to CPOE," said Nancy Larson, division vice president, 3M Health Information Systems Division. "The Siemens initiative will enable a wide range of users to leverage our content in innovative ways through Soarian's integrated workflow."

3M currently maintains coding and compliance content covering all 50 states and encompassing more than 96 million data elements. 3M Medical Necessity Dictionaries contain comprehensive tables of thousands of CPT/HCPCS procedure codes, as well as supporting ICD-9 diagnostic codes and modifiers. Standard content also includes Local Medical Review Policies (LMRPs), which are updated monthly, as well as National Coverage Decisions (NCDs), and Local Coverage Decisions (LCDs).

Soarian is Siemens' new generation, workflow-engineered health information solution that integrates clinical, financial, diagnostic and administrative processes to support patient-centered care. The solution is distinguished by three innovative characteristics: it is workflow-engineered to synchronize processes across the health enterprise; its smart user interface is designed to accommodate tasks based on the roles of individual users; and its embedded analytics that empower users to proactively monitor and measure an enterprise's performance, and then act on those conclusions.

The 3M Medical Necessity Dictionaries and 3M Medical Necessity Online were originally developed and marketed by Info-X Inc., a provider of Web-based coding compliance tools for hospitals and physician groups. 3M Health Information Systems announced the acquisition of Info-X on Aug. 2, 2004.