With offices in Scottsdale, Nashville and Orlando, two-year-old Centauri Health Solutions, Inc.SM has already enjoyed rapid growth, and the HIT solutions provider is poised for even more expansion as the team works to fill needs in a quickly evolving healthcare environment. Centauri’s suite of products and services provide comprehensive data management designed specifically for risk adjustment and quality-based revenue programs.
Headquartered in Arizona, the company simultaneously opened the Scottsdale and Nashville offices upon launching in April 2014. Nashville-based Michelle Miller, chief technical officer for Centauri, is one of four company co-founders. Miller, who has been in Nashville for more than 25 years, has past technology and management experience with Cigna-HealthSpring and Gambro/DaVita, among other healthcare entities.
She said Centauri helps national clients – primarily insurance companies and risk-bearing providers, which are typically large health systems – navigate the myriad data points and compliance requirements to optimize interaction and participation with government-sponsored programs like Medicare Advantage and Medicaid, in addition to the Health Insurance Exchange.
“We offer an end-to-end solution suite,” Miller said of managing all the moving parts. Those private cloud-based solutions fall under the broad headings of risk adjustment, quality and stars, and advisory services. Under each heading, a range of software offerings assists clients with everything from retrospective and prospective analytics to identification of quality care gaps and compliant data submission.
In the realm of risk management, Miller explained, Centauri gathers raw data from clients, pairs it with other industry data sources and then does a deep dive on predictive analytics to help determine which patients are likely to develop chronic conditions and which ones might be care resistant. “A lot of the work we do is making sure that patients with these chronic conditions are proactively managed,” she noted.
However, she continued, identifying a high-risk patient or uncovering a quality gap isn’t enough. The next step, she said, is to help clients address those problems. The services arm of Centauri will go into homes to assess status as needed and provide comprehensive information to physicians for a complete view of the patient. “The more information, the better … and the more accurate the information, the better,” Miller said.
To expand offerings and enhance client service, Centauri has launched a growth strategy that includes acquisition to help strengthen the company’s core mission. In 2015, Centauri acquired revenue cycle management and Medicare risk adjustment company Tactile Management, Inc., which gave them a presence in Orlando. In May 2016, the firm announced Boston-based Silversmith Capital Partners had acquired a significant minority stake in the business and committed $50 million in capital to grow the company’s core platform, fund expansion of new products and services and invest in personnel and infrastructure to scale rapidly.
Last month, Centauri announced the acquisition of Nashville-based IMI Health. The IMI team will join Centauri’s new technology center in Nashville where the majority of the company’s products and services will be developed. “We’re in active growth cycle right now,” Miller said. “We are literally doubling people and revenue in every office.”
IMI, whose clients represent about four million lives, has cloud-based products that provide real-time data-sharing to help close gaps in care and improve care management and quality scores. In March, the National Committee for Quality Assurance announced IMI had earned certification for their software code related to HEDIS® (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set).
Miller noted, “IMI’s technology framework aligns well with Centauri’s delivery platform, allowing us to rapidly publish our combined capabilities to our clients and to continue to push innovation in the market.” In other words, she said with a laugh, “We call IMI the peanut butter to our jelly.”
By running data through the HEDIS engine, Miller said quality gaps are uncovered and highlighted. “The earlier we can see those, the more proactively we can intervene in the healthcare cycle.”
She stressed it isn’t Centauri’s job to babysit physicians who are fully capable of delivering excellent care but instead to provide them the tools and data necessary to make the most effective, efficient decisions based on a 360-degree view. And, she added, the company also helps make sure providers are reimbursed for their hard work through documentation and compliant submission solutions.
“We’re going to be an active, highly qualified partner to help them solve this risk adjustment and quality conundrum and to help them maximize these government programs they are working through,” Miller concluded.
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