Wednesday, September 29th 2004
Kryptiq Signs Deal with Northwest Permanente to Automate Contract Management
PORTLAND, Ore — September 29, 2004 — Kryptiq Corp. announced today that Northwest Permanente, a medical group that contracts exclusively with Kaiser Permanente of the Northwest, has signed a contract to license Guardian Contract Manager™, the first contract management system designed specifically for healthcare payers, to automate the management of contract documents.
Northwest Permanente is transitioning to an electronic system that will integrate Guardian Contract Manager with their existing CRM application (Onyx Software Corporation). The anticipated result will be a suite of tools that will automate existing paper-based provider contract production processes and extract data directly from the Guardian produced electronic documents into an existing data framework. This will provide a comprehensive workflow and a single up-to-date authoritative contract data source for Northwest Permanente and Kaiser Permanente of the Northwest provider contracts.
Managing contracts has a significant impact on any payer’s financial performance. Contracts establish covered services as well as payment rates, and have a material affect on a payer’s financial liabilities. Paper-based contracts can often be lost or misplaced causing significant time delays in payment processing. By using an electronic system to automate contracting processes, Northwest Permanente will be able to readily access any contract, establish and enforce contracting standards, streamline negotiation and pricing, and reduce the number of incorrect claims payments.
"Despite the critical importance of contracts, many enterprises have little formal control over them," says Andy Kyte, vice president at Gartner Research, who estimates Contract Life Cycle Management to be a $20 Billion dollar potential market. He adds, “A company that does not control its contracts does not control its business.”
Corporate officers who are required by Sarbanes-Oxley to certify financial statements can use Guardian Contract Manager to have the immediate visibility needed to fully assess financial liabilities and ensure the accuracy of their financial statements. Instead of estimating liabilities based on a manual review of select set of paper contracts, payers will be able to perform a complete audit of existing contracts in minutes using the Guardian system.
About Kryptiq Corporation
Kryptiq is the leading provider of workflow connectivity solutions for healthcare. Kryptiq streamlines healthcare communications among patients, providers and payers with automation, contract management, and secure messaging technologies. By integrating these solutions with existing systems and applications, Kryptiq enables the trusted transport of health information where and when it is needed. Kryptiq’s fast growing customer base includes well-known providers and payers, such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, HIP of New York, Providence Health Systems, Capital Region Healthcare, Regence BCBS, and Michigan State University. For more information, visit the company on the Web at http://www.kryptiq.com/.
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For more information, press only:
Lisa MacKenzie
MacKenzie Marketing Group
lisam@mackenzie-marketing.com
(503) 225-0725
