July 22, 2008 - Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will contract with McKesson Corp. for the use of InterQual Criteria to review clinical appropriateness decisions for Medicare recipients, marking the ninth year CMS has contracted McKesson for the solution.
The agreement means CMS-contracted Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) will continue to use InterQual products. Enhanced solutions and services will help to broaden the use of the criteria across the QIOs.
The InterQual Criteria will be delivered to the QIOs through an enhanced version of InterQual Online, McKesson’s hosted Web-based application. Users will now be able to interact with the InterQual Online application to see if criteria are being met. Results can be cut, pasted, printed, saved and sent to hospitals and other healthcare stakeholders.
“Over 4,000 healthcare stakeholders, including government agencies, health plans and hospitals use InterQual Criteria,” said Tammie Phillips, vice president of InterQual for McKesson Health Solutions. “The real key to helping our clients maximize the value of InterQual is ensuring that the users are fully trained. To that end, we are excited to be enhancing our service offering this year by providing certified instructor training to the QIOs.”
For more information: www.mckesson.com