Industry Insight

Injection Earns J Code

Baudax Bio, Inc, a pharmaceutical company focused on therapeutics for acute care settings, recently announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established a new permanent J-code for ANJESO (meloxicam) injection facilitating reimbursement in the hospital outpatient, ambulatory surgery center, and physician office settings of care. The code, J1738 (Injection, meloxicam, 1 mg), published on the CMS website, will take effect on October 1, 2020, and it is expected to replace the previously issued C-code.

“We are very pleased that ANJESO will have its own product-specific J-code beginning on October 1, 2020,” says Gerri Henwood, president and CEO of Baudax Bio. “This J-code brings us one step closer to ensuring greater patient access to nonopioid alternatives by providing outpatient providers and physician offices with a uniform code and clearer reimbursement pathway when administering ANJESO and further supports our efforts during our ongoing launch.”

J codes are routine reimbursement codes assigned to outpatient and physician administered “buy and bill” products under Medicare Part B. With the J-code taking effect in October, all hospital outpatient departments, ambulatory surgery centers, and physician offices in the United States will have one consistent HCPCS code to standardize the submission and payment of ANJESO insurance claims across Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and commercial plans.

CMS announced the new J-code for ANJESO in July, allowing time for Medicare Administrative Contractors as well as Medicare Advantage plans and commercial payers to program the new code into their systems in advance of the October 1, 2020, effective date.

— Source: Baudax Bio

Ciox Health Acquires Medal, Inc

Ciox Health, a health technology company, has announced its acquisition of San Francisco–based biomedical natural language processing (biomed-NLP) technology company, Medal, Inc, a leader in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to the interrogation of unstructured medical record data. The acquisition accelerates capabilities to enable real-world data (RWD) in support of research that advances patient care.

“We’re proud to bolster the Ciox Real World Data offering with Medal’s technology and team,” says Pete McCabe, CEO of Ciox. “The team and the biomed-NLP product, combined with Ciox’s technology-enabled ability to create longitudinal records across EHRs and provider systems, remove the friction related to medical records-based clinical research. We will consistently supply consented, HIPAA-compliant, deidentified, research-grade RWD for complex clinical use cases to commercial researchers in pharma and biotech, as well as government-sponsored researchers. The need is particularly highlighted in the COVID-19 research questions being asked by agencies like the FDA, CDC, and NIH.”

As more pharmaceutical and research organizations look to RWD to accelerate clinical research, reliable identification and interpretation of phenotypic data from deep inside medical records are becoming paramount. The most relevant information resides in the unstructured data: the surgical reports, pathology reports, imaging reports, discharge summaries, and other clinician-scribed narrative text. Medal’s software helps identify, contextualize, and interpret narrative-based medical notes, leading to the creation of research-grade data sets at scale. The company’s approach to biomed-NLP and deep learning AI is guided and informed by consensus from clinical expert reviewers across therapeutic areas.

— Source: Ciox Health

Vonage Partners With Redox to Power Health Record Interoperability

Vonage, a cloud communications company helping businesses accelerate their digital transformation, has entered into a strategic partnership with Redox Inc, an integration platform for health care data exchange. Vonage and Redox will offer health care provider organizations private, embedded, and customizable video capabilities, to build apps, share important medical data, and connect securely with colleagues and patients.

The partnership between Vonage and Redox also gives health care providers the ability to connect effectively and privately with patients via a platform that is fully interoperable with EHR and other health care data source systems. With health care providers turning to telemedicine during the global health crisis, embedding video capabilities into the business applications they are already using is helping them continue to offer quality medical care for patients without increasing risk of infection for both patient and doctor.

Together, Vonage and Redox will enable customers to do the following:

• allow health professionals to provide care to their patients remotely, in real time and throughout their treatment;
• bring like-minded people together for support group meetings, all from the comfort and privacy of their home;
• continue health care education through virtual seminars, demonstrations, and webinars;
• enhance the capabilities of existing medical devices with real-time communications; and
• give patients access to a certified personal trainer in their own home via live video, making it simple and convenient to stay healthy.

“Health care provider organizations are looking to reinvent the way they deliver care and engage with patients, as well as the ability to exchange data seamlessly with their core clinical and patient care systems,” says Devin Soelberg, vice president of business development and partnerships at Redox. “By introducing Vonage and Redox APIs into the health care ecosystem, health care organizations are modernizing their care delivery infrastructure. Together, Vonage and Redox perfectly complement that path to modernization.”

— Source: Vonage and Redox

George Washington Inks Deal With nThrive

The George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates (MFA), one of the largest physician-led practice groups in the Washington, DC region, and nThrive, an independent patient-to-payment revenue cycle solutions company, have announced a new agreement to optimize revenue cycle operations and improve the patient experience at the MFA.

MFA is transitioning its employees in registration, coding, billing, financial counseling, and collections to nThrive. As a part of the realignment, colleagues in these positions will join nThrive in the same roles and at the same compensation level and remain in their current locations at the MFA and in work-from-home environments. This agreement covers more than 200 employees in locations in Virginia, DC, and Maryland, with many of the employees working from home due to the pandemic.

MFA will leverage nThrive industry-leading tools, technologies, and revenue cycle expertise to help achieve its financial goals and improve the patient experience through better access, quality, and coordination of care.

— Source: nThrive