Local physicians group acquires management software

The Greater Fort Smith Region Physicians Association announced late Monday (May 18) it will use Valence Health software designed to administratively manage the comparison of fee schedules for various procedures to Medicare benchmarks.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Essentially, the software provides doctors the ability to keep track of fee schedules for various contracts, ensure the billing is coordinated with the fee schedule and, where possible, integrate the payer contract schedules into a physician’s existing software management program(s), according to info from Valence.

“The newly re-formed independent physicians association (IPA), based in Fort Smith, AR will use vElect to simplify their contracting operations. This is the third Messenger Model client that Valence Health has added since the beginning of this year,” noted a statement from Valence Health.

The association was recently reorganized by a group of physicians seeking to protect themselves from the growing downward pricing, administrative and quality of work pressures resulting from a health care sector squeezed by hospital chains, insurance companies and federal reimbursement policies.

According to Valence, he 100 physician members agreed to implement vElect in order to minimize the administrative processes required to manage the contracting process.

“In the current economic climate, clearly it is important to spend funds wisely on tools and technology that bring value to our members and make our organization more efficient,” Michelle Futter, association director, noted in the Valence statement. “We chose to invest in vElect because this web-based solution was an affordable product that truly met our needs. That’s important for an organization of our size and resources, which depends solely on membership fees.”