Press Releases

HILL PHYSICIANS SELECTS HEALINX SECURE ONLINE COMMUNICATION SERVICES

California's Largest Independent Practice Association, With 2,000 Primary Care And Specialist Physicians, Licenses Healinx Online Services To Streamline Referrals Process

Emeryville, CA, April 24, 2002 — Healinx Corporation, the premier provider of Web-based, doctor-patient communication services, today announced a licensing agreement with San Ramon, Calif.-based Hill Physicians Medical Group to provide online referrals via the secure Healinx messaging platform. With 2,000 affiliated physicians and more than 380,000 HMO enrollees in northern California, Hill Physicians is the nation's largest independent practice association.

The advanced messaging features of the Healinx platform will allow Hill Physicians to securely send online referrals and attachments to colleagues both within and outside of the Hill Physicians network — streamlining and improving communication between doctors treating shared patients.

With this agreement, Hill Physicians joins a rapidly growing list of medical groups nationwide who have selected Healinx as their secure online communications platform. Healinx will serve as a key component of Hill's comprehensive e-commerce initiative, designed to achieve cost efficiencies and improve services by utilizing the speed and convenience of the Internet to connect its growing network of physicians across northern California.

"Our decision to adopt the Healinx service was based on its flexibility, security, and advanced workflow support. By streamlining the patient referral process, we improve service for our doctors and patients, and reduce costs for our organization — supporting our mission to make the healthcare system better for patients, doctors, and purchasers" said Steve McDermott, chief executive officer of Hill Physicians Medical Group. "While our administrative overhead is already well below the industry average of 15%, the opportunity to minimize the administrative waste inherent in the paper-based referral process will help us realize even greater savings."

The potential savings from shifting to an online referrals process is significant. In fact, one information technology healthcare consultant estimates that, due to complexity, phone tag, and other practical barriers, the referring physician can incur about $40 in administrative costs to make a typical referral, and the referred physician incurs another $30, for a total of $70 in administrative costs. This compares with about $10 for a referral that can be administered electronically without phone calls, manual checks of provider lists, and so on (Bader, B.S., Summer 2000, E-health or e-hype: What your board needs to know to approve an e-health strategy. E-Healthcare Connections, 1-4).

"Our agreement with Hill Physicians illustrates the flexibility and power of the Healinx service," said Giovanni Colella, MD, president and chief executive officer of Healinx. "It demonstrates how our modular Web-based communication service can be cost-effectively adapted to a variety of practice types and needs. Our client organizations can use the Healinx platform to provide a broad range of online medical services, or to augment an existing service portfolio with a single service — as in the case of the Hill Physicians deployment around referrals. Healinx offers our clients an easily deployed, highly scalable, secure network to connect providers — improving efficiency and quality of care."

About Hill Physicians Medical Group
Hill Physicians, with 2,000 affiliated physicians based in six counties from Oakland to the Oregon border, is the largest independent practice association in the nation. It has received awards from numerous organizations including the Pacific Business Group on Health, which last year named Hill Physicians the Top Performing Medical Group in California, and Arthur Andersen, which gave Hill Physicians its Strategic Leadership Award.

Health plans contracted with by Hill Physicians include Aetna, Blue Cross/CaliforniaCare, Blue Shield of California, CIGNA, Health Net, and PacifiCare. For additional information, visit www.hillphysicians.com or call 1-925-820-8300.

About Healinx
Healinx Corporation is the premier provider of Web-based, doctor-patient communication services. The Healinx service enables secure, clinically structured, and auditable communications among doctors, patients, pharmacists, and other healthcare constituents. Healinx also helps doctors address their need to recoup income while providing efficient, secure online services to their patients. At the same time, Healinx offers patients convenience and access—the convenience of communicating directly with their doctors at anytime from anyplace. By streamlining the patient-doctor relationship, Healinx enables all stakeholders in the healthcare delivery process to improve customer satisfaction and reduce exposure to rising healthcare costs. For information, visit www.relayhealth.com.