McKesson completes acquisition of Portico Systems

Malvern, PA, July 26, 2011 — Today, McKesson announced that it has completed the acquisition of Portico Systems, a leader in integrated provider management solutions.  This acquisition expands McKesson’s ability to help payers efficiently and effectively utilize value-based reimbursement models and provider networks including patient centered medical homes as key building blocks for new products.

“In this age of health reform, it is imperative that payers and providers deepen their financial and clinical alignment to ensure optimal outcomes at the right cost,” said Emad Rizk, MD, president of McKesson Health Solutions.  “We are excited to integrate Portico’s technology with our existing portfolio of leading payment, decision and care management tools to help organizations achieve accountable, collaborative care while reducing administrative costs.”

Dr. Rizk said, “New care delivery models are requiring the deployment of a variety of payment and reimbursement strategies within diverse networks across the country.  The adoption and management of these models is complex, and matching the reimbursement scheme to the right provider network, while strategically imperative, is operationally challenging without the right technologies and automation in place.”

Portico’s technology enables healthcare organizations to design, build, service and provide value-based reimbursement to their complex provider networks.  It also provides the ability to align and automate key network management activities including, provider enrollment, credentialing, contracting and pricing. When combined with McKesson’s payment and decision management tools, this technology will accelerate McKesson’s ability to help clients optimize their network performance and address these new delivery models and reimbursement challenges, including episodes of care disbursement, network steerage, complex claims pricing and incentive management.

“We have been working under healthcare reform in Massachusetts since 2006,” said Bill Fandrich, Chief Information Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.  “”The development of new network and provider payment models is a key building block of our strategic vision to make quality health care affordable, and the Portico solution is core to these new models. We see Portico’s technology as a critical enabler of our strategy as we align high value products with unique needs of our customer segments.”

“Horizon uses both McKesson and Portico technologies today,” said Christy Bell, Executive Vice President, Horizon Healthcare Services, Inc.  “McKesson now has an exciting opportunity to help enable organizations to automate the entire process of managing network and reimbursement strategies straight through pricing and claims payment, with greater accuracy and fewer feeds and hand-offs.”

Founded in 1997, Portico solutions are used by approximately 40 payer and provider networks, representing approximately 42 million covered lives. Portico Systems is exclusively focused on empowering health plans to transform the performance of their networks, while significantly reducing medical, administrative and IT costs. Its Integrated Provider Management (IPM) platform simplifies the design, maintenance, reimbursement, and performance management of provider networks, while facilitating provider-patient collaboration.