Ascend Healthcare Systems LLC., is the healthcare information management products and services division of Ascend Group Limited headquartered in Centreville, Virginia. Ascend provides advanced software technology based products and services solutions to Hospitals, Clinics, Healthcare Networks, HMOs, Physician Practices and other healthcare organizations.

Ascend product and service solutions are fully HIPAA compliant. Both service and product solutions include advanced technology components such as DES encryption, access security based on digital signatures, secured nation-wide VPN network and an advanced scheme of user code/password/privilege assignment management. Ascend staff also goes through mandated background checks. Collectively this workflow offers the most comprehensive HIPAA compliance.

SERVICES

Medical Transcription Outsourcing

Ascend offers HIPAA compliant medical transcription outsourcing to hospitals, clinics and physician practices. This outsourcing service provides high quality reports and guaranteed turn-around time based document delivery. The service and support coverage is provided on a round-the-clock (24 hours, 365 days per year) basis. The service also features MPI/demographics download and transcribed document upload interfaces to Meditech, SoftMed, Keane, CPSI, IDX, HBOC STAR, Arrendale, PHAMIS and other major HIS/HIM systems.

Ascend offers firm, fixed-price, multi-year contracts to its clients. Ascend pricing is all-inclusive and requires no capital cost investment by the client.

Medical Billing

Ascend offers Medical Billing Outsourcing to clinics, physician practices and ER or Radiology departments of a hospital. These outsourcing services ensure accurate, on time billing with a lower cost compared to an in-house function.

Medical Coding

Ascend offers Medical Coding Outsourcing to clinics, physician practices and ER, Radiology and Medical Records departments of a hospital. These outsourcing services ensure accurate, on time coding with a lower cost compared to an in-house function. Ascend services offer coding report turn around of 24 hours, 99% accuracy with comprehensive quality assurance, exclusive use of certified coders, secured and extensive reporting; and HIPAA, CMS [HCFA], CCI and LMRP compliant.

Medical Staffing

Ascend offers staff augmentation services by providing qualified and properly credentialed contract personnel in various categories. Ascend contract staffing personnel maintain their certification, have qualified references, and undergo background checks.

PRODUCTS

MedARCHIVE®

MedARCHIVE® is an advanced electronic patient record management system from Ascend. This HIPAA compliant system solution provides secure, organized, electronic patient record management solutions to Hospitals, HMOs, Clinics and Group practices. It is highly cost effective and significantly more efficient compared to manual paper based and microfiche methods of record management. The system improves organization, distribution, HIPAA mandated access control and availability of patient charts to the point of need. On an average, the cost of this solution is lower than monthly wages for a medical record administrative assistant.

SmartSEARCH®

SmartSEARCH® is a universal software solution for easy search and retrieval of transcribed patient medical records from Ascend. This software system significantly reduces staff time otherwise wasted on locating patient medical records. Ascend provides this software at no charge.

SmartCOUNT®

SmartCOUNT® is an industry standard transcription billing software system from Ascend. Practically every hospital, clinic and practice using a medical transcription outsourcing service remains uncertain about the charges for this service. This software system permits each facility to accurately conduct its own billing analysis and audit based on AHIMA-specified character count in each transcribed report. The software counts number of pages and AHIMA-defined total number of characters in each transcribed document. It also has an optional capability to extract and report demographics information such as Medical Record Number, Physician’s Name, Patient Name, Date of Dictation and other fields for each report as specified by the user. Each facility using this software eliminates all discrepancies from its transcription billing. Ascend provides this software at no-charge.

SmartVOICE®

SmartVOICE® is a HIPAA compliant dictation/transcription server solution from Ascend. This solution eliminates typical problems associated with most of offerings on the market. It utilizes voice ports for dictation only while separating transcription access to a tightly networked secured FTP server. This architecture provides for a larger number of active voice ports available to authors or conversely requires smaller voice port configuration to support a physician group compared to a traditional dictation server. This architecture also provides for HIPAA compliant access authentication, reduction in voice storage, DES encryption, complete user management, real-time management reporting and other advanced functions. The system is based on Dell PowerEdge system under Windows 2000 operating environment. Ascend offers this advanced product solution with an in-built option for system backup at its network center in event of a failure.

Ascend deploys its HIPAA compliant products and services solutions after a thorough assessment of requirements and joint planning with each client followed by an acceptance phase. This level of client-supplier partnership is a hallmark of Ascend's successful marketing to key institutions.

Ascend services its clients nationally from its offices in Boston MA, Calgary AB, Centreville VA, Dallas TX, Salt Lake City UT, Spokane WA and Wilmington DE.