Comrad certified for Medicare Web Services, releases pre-arrival workflow

Radiology information system vendor Comrad has received its notice of integration with Medicare Web Services, thought to be one of the first major healthcare vendors to achieve the feat.

Comrad has also recently announced the second release of its web-based patient engagement platform Aura Care Connect, featuring a co-branded app for patient pre-registration workflows to be completed and integrated back into the COMRAD RIS workflow.

The Melbourne-headquartered company has also developed an API to Care Connect that it is making available to other vendors with the intention of opening up the healthcare ecosystem, including offering Care Connect’s patient engagement and billing capabilities to non-Comrad users.

The strategy to work with third parties and even competitors is being driven by Comrad’s new CEO, Mark Sabotti, a well-known healthcare IT executive in Australia and New Zealand who has done past stints with BT, IBM, CSC and Telstra Health.

Mr Sabotti joined the company in mid-January and plans to broaden its reach, not just to its core radiology customers but to the other “ologies”, and beyond.

Mr Sabotti said the opportunity to work with a smaller, more nimble company is one of the reasons he was drawn to Comrad. The company counts about one-third of Australia’s private diagnostic imaging practices and two-thirds of the New Zealand private market, along with some public facilities.

“I’ve spent decades pretty exclusively working for large, listed US multinationals and if not, with other really large companies,” he said. “What drew me to Conrad was firstly, it allowed me to experience a smaller business and to have the nimbleness and agility to move pretty quickly. I think in health IT that’s really, really important.

“And then, secondly, I really was drawn to the fact that I could be a CEO and be able to make those kinds of decisions with a team.”

Comrad released its web-based, next generation Aura platform in 2017 and has since migrated almost all of its 450 or so practices over to the new system. It has since added numerous features, including Aura Consult, which gives referrers secure access to radiology patient information at any time; Aura Forms, which lets users create digital versions of their paper-based forms but also to develop their own workflows; and its Aura APIs, which let users build their own clinical results applications such as referrer or patient portals.

The new Care Connect module was released in April this year with the first functionality being online appointment scheduling. Its most recent version includes the co-branded app for patient pre-registration workflows.

The new capability allows patients to view their appointment details and download a summary to their calendar or save a copy to their device; complete, sign and submit web-based consent forms before they arrive in the practice; and capture an image of their referral document or other relevant clinical documents, and securely upload them to the RIS.

It also lets them view procedure instructions and preparation details for their appointment and view information links related to their scan.

In the near future, it will integrate with GP eReferral workflows to further automate patient appointment scheduling and include post-examination workflows including patient surveys and secure access to view invoices, reports and images.

It is this sort of open functionality that Mr Sabotti intends to expand upon and offer to other users, describing Care Connect as more than just a patient engagement platform.

“The first modules are online appointments but that’s pretty easy,” he said. “It’s more about empowering the patient, or as I say, our customers’ customer. So we have pre-arrive workflows and self-arrive workflows, and the billing and payment and surveys that surround that. It allows the patient to not spend any more time in a medical facility than they have to.”

Mr Sabotti said it was his belief that it is not just the best product that wins in the market, but the ones that integrate the best in the broader ecosystem, and this is what he plans to expand to broader markets.

“We’ve got an API to Care Connect so you don’t have to be a Comrad customer to take up Care Connect online appointments. In fact, we’re working with other providers to bring Care Connect to them.

“Most importantly is post exam, so it’s the billing and the surveys and patient satisfaction that are really important. We’ve got the API that we’re making available and in fact, we’re also working with competitors too. It’s about this siloed nature of healthcare: everyone complains about it, but at the same time, I think we have a responsibility as well.

“We can all grow together. One of my big philosophies is that we’re opening up and we’re going to work with the broader ecosystem and that underpins my strategy to extend beyond radiology. There’s absolutely no reason, particularly with the open architecture that we have and the APIs that we have, there’s absolutely no reason why we can’t expand Aura or Care Connect in particular to adjacent markets in healthcare.”

Comrad has also been working on achieving its NOI for Medicare Web Services, which Services Australia is introducing in March next year to replace its client adaptor-based technology for interactions with Medicare. It is also retiring its public key infrastructure-based certificate authentication approach.

Comrad understands it is the only major vendor in diagnostic imaging to achieve certification so far, and the company is now readying its clients for the change. Any customers still using its older technology will make the change to Aura when the new Web Services approach will be mandated.

“The billing’s the hard stuff but we have been working with Medicare and we will be a fully Aura platform this time next year,” Mr Sabotti said. “We’ve done all the work along with Medicare and they’ve been nothing but fantastic in helping us.

“We’re working with all of our clients to get them onto the new platform. The feedback has been great. The most important thing for our clients is to provide exemplary levels of care, but it is a financially challenged sector and to be able to almost guarantee that our clients will have improved cash flow is very, very important. And I’m proud that we can facilitate that.

“We’ve openly made by our learnings from this available to the broader markets so it’s quicker everyone else to do as well.”

The longer term strategy is not just to make Comrad’s functionality available to the other ologies but to the hospital market as well.

“My background is in hospital systems and there’s no reason that we can’t expand into the hospital space in selected areas, particularly with privates, as we’ve got the platform,” Mr Sabotti said.

“We don’t just have Aura Care Connect; we have a really nimble digital forms solution and we allow our clients to build their own forms, and not just their own forms but their own workflows. I can see a time where I can be talking to private hospital clients about this kind of solution as an adjunct to paper, which a lot of privates are still on.

“My strategy going forward is deepening what we’ve got in our core market and then broadening that out to the adjacent markets. That’s what really drew me to Comrad.”