Health information network Availity has agreed to buy Diameter Health, a clinical data quality and interoperability company, for an undisclosed sum.
The companies say their offerings are complementary and that integrating Diameter Health’s technology into Availity’s existing clinical data gateway capabilities positions Availity to deliver one of the strongest integrated clinical and claims data networks and interoperability platforms in healthcare.
Launched in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2001, as a joint venture between Florida Blue and Humana, Availity's original mission was to reduce administrative abrasion between payers and providers in Florida by digitizing manual, inefficient, and time-consuming processes. Today, Availity's investor base includes the original founders, HCSC, Anthem, and Novo Holdings Inc.
Payers and providers use Availity’s solution to exchange information without picking up the phone. Availity facilitates billions of clinical, administrative, and financial transactions annually. Earlier this year Availity created a strategic alliance with PriorAuthNow to form what the companies are calling the healthcare industry's largest integrated prior authorization network.
Founded in 2013, Farmington, Conn.-based Diameter Health said it supports stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem whose success depends on timely and accurate clinical data at both the patient and population levels. Customers include health insurance organizations, health information exchanges (HIEs) and data aggregators, life insurance and insuretech vendors, government agencies, and health information technology solution vendors and systems integrators.
Availity said the combination of their solutions will fuel innovations in value-based care arrangements, provide seamless information exchange between providers, health plans and technology partners, and normalize structured and unstructured clinical data for digitally enabled use cases.
“This acquisition underscores Availity’s strategy to empower providers and health plans to benefit from actionable, real-time, and precise data insights to reduce administrative inefficiencies, maximize revenue potential, and drive quality of care improvements for patients on one scalable platform,” said Russ Thomas, CEO of Availity, in a statement. “Fueled by Diameter’s technology, Availity will create the nation’s preeminent data acquisition and interoperability platform. We are thrilled to leverage the talents and energy of the Diameter Health team to deliver an integrated clinical and claims data platform that provides real-time, intelligent, bidirectional data workflows and insights.”
Diameter Health said its API Fusion technology automates the process of “upcycling” clinical data in real-time, turning inconsistent, multi-source and multi-format data into a robust longitudinal data asset.
“Clinical data is tremendously valuable, but the ability to structurally and semantically normalize multi-source, multi-format clinical data, and further enrich and deploy that data to drive action is still an emerging capability in healthcare. Diameter Health is a leader in unlocking clinical data’s full potential,” said Mary Lantin, president and COO of Diameter Health, in a statement. “Harnessing the power of clinical data is a critical opportunity for Availity. By combining our complementary capabilities and sitting at the intersection across providers, health plans and data partners, we have the opportunity to truly disrupt the healthcare industry and break new ground in advancing data intelligence.”
The companies said that combining Diameter’s API technology and Fusion engine with Availity’s Clinical Gateway capabilities will enable health plans, providers, and partners to:
- Acquire and streamline clinical data acquisition through a broad network of providers, vendors and partners
- Upcycle clinical data into a clean, clear and precise asset by normalizing data to industry standard terminologies, intelligently reorganizing and deduplicating disparate data sources, and leveraging clinical informatics best practices
- Create a summarized, comprehensive, longitudinal health record
- Deliver fit-for-purpose data and enable bidirectional and intelligent workflows that support care gap closure, quality measurement, risk adjustment, automated prior authorization, care management and other data-driven use cases
The transaction is expected to be completed during the third quarter of 2022. Additional details regarding the transaction were not disclosed.
