Next phase of medical management systems: automating administrative transactions to integrate payors and providers

Today, medical management is burdened by the cost and hassle of manual administrative tasks. Manual intensive processing (that is, phone and fax) of referral requests and institutional authorization transactions results in significant unnecessary costs for the providers and payors, delays in approval, and problems with errors. To address these administrative burdens, the next phase of online (Internet- and wireless-enabled) medical management applications will focus on the administrative and transaction side, including self-service referral and authorization processing between the payor and provider. The advent of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) greatly improves the ability to gain widespread adoption of these online applications thanks to mandated standardization of many routine transactions. This article explores this next phase of online administrative and transaction medical management applications from the payors' perspective and explores their connectivity with providers. Payors are striving to meet several objectives as they implement these online administrative and transaction medical management systems: reducing the administrative burden and cost, changing traditional medical policies, increasing provider adoption of connective technologies, addressing HIPAA compliance, and achieving higher levels of system integration.