The leading medical device management solution for hospitals
The warranty credit management solution draws on Champion’s core expertise developing medical device management systems that improve patient safety, compliance and operating costs.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) January 08, 2015
Champion Medical Technologies, a healthcare information technology company and leader in tissue tracking and medical device management systems (MDMS) for hospitals, has entered into an agreement with Mayo Clinic to develop and market a warranty credit management system for medical implants used in cardiac electrophysiology.
This system will allow providers to more efficiently manage the warranty process for implanted medical devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators. In order to receive full or partial credit from manufacturers for devices that are covered under warranty or replaced because of recalls a provider must navigate a complex process involving returning the device to the manufacturer for analysis and completing required forms. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which administers the Medicare program, generally requires hospitals to obtain available credits from manufacturers for replaced medical devices and to keep records of the credits they receive. These credits can amount to thousands of dollars per patient and CMS has levied stiff fines to hospitals it judges noncompliant in securing warrant credits which are due and applying those credits to the patient’s bill.
“We’re very proud to work with Mayo Clinic to provide hospitals with a management tool that solves the complex problem of capturing warranty reimbursement dollars for pacemakers, cardioverter-defibrillators and their electrical leads,” said Peter Casady, Chief Executive Officer of Champion Medical Technologies. “The warranty credit management solution draws on Champion’s core expertise developing medical device management systems that improve patient safety, compliance and operating costs. For example, it will help increase patient safety by automatically registering the patient’s cardiac device with its manufacturer through an electronic data transfer. In most hospitals today, this is a manual process, which is inefficient and increases the potential for data entry errors.”
Under the agreement, Champion and Mayo will co-develop the warranty credit management software and conduct beta testing at Mayo Clinic. Champion will hold the exclusive global marketing license. The warranty credit management solution will be incorporated as a module in Champion’s UDITracker® Interventional software, developed specifically for the cardiac catheterization lab, electrophysiology and interventional radiology markets.
“As many as 25% of pacemakers and 32% of ICDs are replaced annually.* To claim a warranty credit for our patients, hospitals must return replaced devices to the manufacturers, where the device is tested,” said Paul. Friedman, MD Vice-chair, Cardiovascular Medicine, and Director, Cardiac Electronic Implantable Device Lab at Mayo Clinic
“Through the warranty credit claim process hospitals could extract clinical data about implant performance and ensure that credits are applied to the patient’s bill.”
About Champion Medical Technologies
Champion Medical Technologies is a privately held, healthcare information technology company and leader in tissue tracking and implantable medical device management systems (MDMS) for hospitals. Champion’s flagship system UDITracker® captures, documents and shares medical implant information between patient care and supply chain information systems, empowering hospitals with the insights they need to increase patient safety and drive down operating costs.
UDITracker® is a comprehensive medical device management system that integrates regulatory compliance, inventory management, quality assurance, warranty credit management, and product recall inventory and patient matching into a single, streamlined system. Using barcode scanners, smartphone apps and RFID storage units, users capture accurate and complete medical device label information in a single swipe, to ensure patient safety, produce inventory cost savings and to generate business-decision making analytics.
UDITracker® features interoperable interfaces to most electronic health record and inventory management systems, ensuring that medical devices can be uniquely identified, located in inventory, tracked during transfer from storage to the OR and traced directly to patients. Uniquely identified medical device information can be searched, sorted and shared within a single hospital or across a group of hospitals.
RecallConnect®, the only real-time recall inventory and patient matching system on the market, received a Chicago Innovation Award in recognition of its unique patient safety feature. It reduces from months to hours the amount of time it takes hospitals to identify patients and current inventory affected by a medical device product recall.
Founder and Chief Executive Officer Peter Casady established Champion Medical Technologies in 2006. Today, it serves more than 200 hospitals and major medical centers nationwide and is the market leader in tissue compliance and medical device management.