At Allina Medical Laboratories, Billing is about Much More Than Simply Processing Claims

SAN DIEGO, May 27, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE)--

Allina Medical Laboratories Adopts XIFIN Solution For Revenue Cycle Management

XIFIN Inc. today announces its agreement with Allina Medical Laboratories to provide its comprehensive Revenue Cycle Management Solution for its outreach laboratories.

When Allina began to examine its reference laboratory billing process, it discovered that its use of the hospital's billing system was affecting collections effort. Simple things, such as write-off limits that were set for more expensive hospital charges were causing a significant number of lower cost lab claims to be automatically written off. Or, the system's inability to validate diagnosis codes for lab tests was leading to far too many claim denials. A key problem was the billing system could not provide the financial details needed to accurately measure these, let alone many other critical performance measures. Allina recognized that the lab was different from other ancillary services and needed systems and processes specifically designed to accommodate the unique billing challenges faced by outreach laboratories.

Allina brought in Validus Consulting to evaluate and recommend options for the lab's revenue cycle management process. "It was clear that the hospital billing system could not meet the lab's billing needs," commented Jeremy Pierotti, Principal at Validus. "The lab needed to manage its revenue cycle more aggressively, and it needed a billing system that could support it. After a thorough evaluation of several options, we recommended XIFIN because it met Allina's needs, bringing significant, process management capabilities not available elsewhere."

"We're very excited about the new capabilities XIFIN brings us," said Laurel Krause, MD, Vice President and Medical Director for Allina Medical Laboratories. "XIFIN will not only help us solve many, long-standing problems in this enormously complex process, they will provide us with the measurement and management tools we need to better understand and improve our performance."

"We feel very fortunate to be selected by such a prestigious organization as Allina," said Lâle White, CEO of XIFIN. "The thoroughness of their selection process demonstrated both their understanding of the complexity of hospital outreach billing and their commitment to making it better."

About Allina Medical Laboratories
Allina Medical Laboratories is part of Minneapolis-based Allina Hospitals & Clinics, a non-profit, health care organization serving communities throughout Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. It is an integrated, multi-site laboratory, providing personalized, quality service to its customers. It has partnered with Hospital Pathology Associates, which includes 27 certified pathologists in a variety of specialties. For more information go to www.allina.com/ahs/allinalabs.nsf.

About Validus Consulting
Validus Consulting, a Minnesota-based health care consulting firm, develops and implements operational solutions that enable clients to respond efficiently to marketplace challenges. Validus specializes in business process redesign; IT evaluation, planning and improvement; and operations improvement. Validus consultants bring a 10-year track record of delivering solutions with measurable benefits. For clients from New Jersey to Hawaii, Validus has produced immediate and sustainable results that meet the unique needs of each organization. For more information, visit www.validusconsulting.com.

About XIFIN Inc.
Founded in 1997 by senior laboratory executives, XIFIN® delivers a highly automated, Web-based application with integrated infrastructure services to support laboratory Accounts Receivable and financial management operations. XIFIN targets process errors that lead to bad debt, rework and compliance liabilities, through its closed-loop, rules-driven workflow automation. XIFIN Services manage, deliver and maintain the entire infrastructure supporting A/R including: connectivity, reference databases, payer requirements, transaction services vendors, hardware & software, as well as compliance/regulatory workflow logic. www.xifin.com.