Clearinghouse Vendors Tighten Race for Provider Satisfaction

OREM, UT, December 14, 2010 (Press-News.org) KLAS, the healthcare technology research firm, today announced the findings of its 2010 study, "Ambulatory Clearinghouse: Loaded Results and Broad Choices for Providers". KLAS interviewed existing clearinghouse customers regarding 14 different vendor offerings. While there is a 13-point range from the best satisfaction scores to the worst, the top three vendors are nearly indistinguishable by score alone.

Navicure earned the top rank with a score of 92.0 out of 100, closely followed by ZirMed (91.9), and Gateway EDI (91.0). Capario (88.8) scored highest among indirect clearinghouse products. Of the 14 vendor offerings, 10 are direct services (providers have direct access to the vendor for support) and 4 are indirect (which are reliant on practice management vendors for support and contracting). The report also highlights direct systems from Allscripts, Availity, Capario, Emdeon, GE, Ingenix, and RealMed; and indirect systems from Emdeon, Practice Insight, and RelayHealth.

"Vendors as a whole are more in tune with their clients and configure their products and services to better meet provider needs," said Mark Wagner, KLAS research director and author of the report. "The top five vendors now score within 3.3 points of one another. Emdeon's indirect product is the most improved, lifting their score 6.5 points in a single year."

A continuing trend in the study indicates that providers are willing to pay higher fees for superior functionality if that functionality makes them significantly more efficient and helps to dramatically shorten the A/R cycle.

"Providers consistently refer to Navicure and ZirMed as expensive, yet maintain they get their money's worth from these vendors and score them as the top-two performers," Wagner commented. "Their clients frequently reflect on the vendors' high success rate with claims, in addition to responsive and knowledgeable customer support."

Though clearinghouse customers are generally more satisfied than they were a year ago, they also sent a clear message that vendors need to continue improving their offerings. Additional information about what functionality providers say is missing, why providers switch from one vendor to another and the characteristics of the top-performing vendors is available to healthcare providers online for a significant discount off the standard retail price. To purchase the full "Ambulatory Clearinghouse: Loaded Results and Broad Choices for Providers" report, healthcare providers and vendors can visit www.KLASresearch.com/reports.

KLAS is a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors. KLAS' mission is to improve delivery, by independently measuring vendor performance for the benefit of our healthcare provider partners, consultants, investors, and vendors. Working together with executives from over 4500 hospitals and over 2500 clinics, KLAS delivers timely reports, trends, and statistics, which provide a solid overview of vendor performance in the industry. KLAS measures performance of software, professional services, and medical equipment vendors. For more information, go to www.KLASresearch.com, email marketing@KLASresearch.com, or call 1-800-920-4109 to speak with a KLAS representative. Follow KLAS on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KLASresearch.