Philips announces medSage enhancements

ANDOVER, Mass., March 14, 2013—Philips Respironics, a unit of Royal Philips Electronics, is pleased to announce significant advancements to its medSage obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) patient management and resupply solution. The medSage service is a web-based voice and e-mail software that has helped OSA patients achieve compliance with their sleep therapies while helping home care providers efficiently manage and grow their mask resupply businesses since 2004.

The new version 3.0 enhancements represent a major re-launch, incorporating the most extensive updates to date based on best practices of home care providers. The changes reduce by half the number of steps and time needed to perform functions such as adding and viewing comments, patient searching, finding and editing reorders, and resolving patient notifications.

“MedSage has been extremely valuable to us. Faced with all of the challenges that the industry presents, it is fantastic to have a service that helps us to limit additional payroll costs, supports patient use of CPAP, and offers a tool to monitor compliance,” said John Loyer, CEO, J&L Medical Services. “We are very pleased with the service and with its outcomes.”

The medSage service features include automated eligibility determination, customizable patient call scripts designed to assist with reimbursement documentation and other industry requirements including CMS reports. It also allows for the patient’s preferred method of communication such as pre-recorded voice recognition surveys, email, live calls, or after-hours hotline with fulfillment service providers.

Updates to medSage are the result of information gathered from more than 300 home care provider customers and reflect their most effective and best practices. “The enhancements reflect years of knowledge gained through our market leadership in this space and are the result of significant investments made on behalf of our customers,” said Tim Murphy, senior director, Sleep and Home Respiratory Business Solutions. “The release of these new capabilities and improvements is timely in light of the recent and ongoing reimbursement, documentation and other payer policy changes. We will contact our medSage customers throughout 2013 to help enable this new version of our service.”

The medSage service is intended for larger home care providers and is part of Philips Respironics Fit for Life comprehensive resupply sleep apnea mask solution. Fit for Life also offers the EncoreResupply patient compliance management and ongoing supply replenishment service for small to mid-size home care providers and sleep labs. Go online to www.philips.com.