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Nation's Largest Private Provider of Medical Transportation

Leverages Acorde to Streamline and Consolidate Processes

Optika Inc. (Nasdaq:OPTK), a leading provider of imaging, workflow and collaborative commerce software, Wednesday announced that American Medical Response (AMR) has purchased Acorde enterprise solutions.

AMR is the largest provider of emergency and non-emergency medical transportation in the United States. The company, founded in 1992, operates in 35 states and employs over 20,000 persons at 265 operating sites. The company transports more than 4 million patients per year in a fleet of more than 4,000 vehicles.

AMR will deploy the Acorde solution to reduce cost and increase efficiency in the Patient Billing Services (PBS) processing of Patient Care Records (PCRS) and payment processing in its accounts payable and voucher entry applications.

"We are very confident that implementing Acorde enterprise solutions will reduce our billing cycles and significantly lower Days Sales Outstanding (DSOs)," said Bill Nicolai, national director of technical services at AMR. "This solution will help to eliminate most hard-copy documents generated by the EMTs and paramedics in the field so that they can focus all their attention on quality patient care.

"We believe that the product will increase the speed with which payments are received from payers such as HMOs, private insurance companies, Medicaid and Medicare carriers."

Within the Patient Care Records (PCR) area, Acorde will fundamentally change and improve the speed with which these records are processed and billed while decreasing processing costs by automating the Quality Assurance (QA), activation, coding & data entry, billing, and re-billing processes.

The result will be an on-time filing of claims and a faster, more consistent receipt of payment.

Acorde's ability to scan and index AMR's paper-based trip tickets and supporting documentation upon arrival at various field locations and regional operation centers will virtually eliminate PCR loss, duplication and storage.

In addition, the Acorde system will provide enterprise-wide digital access from the desktop to all trip-related information from a single integrated interface. This will dramatically improve processing time by eliminating the need for employees to repeatedly leave their work areas to research, retrieve, fax and copy documents.

"We are pleased that American Medical Response is realizing the considerable value in leveraging its existing business applications to gain process efficiencies while further streamlining strategic areas of its business," said Mark K. Ruport, president, chief executive officer and chairman of Optika.

"By enabling AMR and others to take advantage of the process automation, storage and retrieval, and collaboration capabilities of Acorde, we expect to continue seeing dramatic reduction in costs and increased efficiencies for businesses worldwide."

# posted by Medical Information : 3:12 AM