Tag: Intralign

Intralign continues to help providers optimize the cost and quality of surgical care
Phoenix, AZ Oct 28, 2013 – Intralign, a specialty healthcare services provider, today announced that Cardinal Health made an investment to contribute to the expansion of intra-operative management solutions for hospitals. A portfolio company of Altaris Capital Partners and Heritage Group, Intralign offers surgical assistance in combination with analytics and process design services to help providers optimize quality and cost of major joint replacement and other surgeries.
“It’s a tremendous privilege for an industry leader like Cardinal Health to support our vision for implementing sustainable change management solutions within hospitals and health systems to improve the cost-effectiveness of healthcare delivery,” said Rick Ferreira, president and CEO of Intralign. “Today, Intralign’s services focus on the intra-operative space – where more than 40 percent of the cost of the total episode of care is incurred. We help hospitals and clinicians understand cost drivers and help them gain control of the process.”
The value of Intralign lies in the unique combination of in-surgery support and resource management with analytics and service line process optimization. Through its intra-operative clinical support services, Intralign makes high-quality Surgical First Assistants (SFAs) available in the operating room, eliminating the need for hospitals to have SFAs on staff, reducing procedure time, and ensuring efficient use of resources before, during and after surgery. The benefit of intra-operative support is enhanced by Intralign’s analytics services, which enable the hospital to utilize internal and external data to gain a comprehensive and action-oriented understanding of resources usage, treatment quality, etc. The company also offers intelligent care design support to help providers enhance the flow of people and activities in the delivery of major joint replacement, so that ideal efficiencies and quality goals are realized.
“It’s important to us at Cardinal Health that we support the innovation coming from companies like Intralign in order to give providers actionable information, allowing them to address clinical, business and financial challenges in this new era of healthcare,” said Lisa Ashby, president of Medical Devices and Diagnostics at Cardinal Health.

Agreement brings cost and quality improvement solutions to over 65,000 healthcare organizations.
Phoenix, AZ Oct 1, 2013 – Intralign, a specialty healthcare services provider, today announced it has been awarded a supplier contract with Novation, the industry’s largest health care supply chain expertise, analytics and contracting company for the more than 65,000 members of VHA Inc., UHC, Children’s Hospital Association and Provista, LLC. Intralign will offer intra-operative clinical support services backed by data-driven efficiency tools and care-centered design processes, enabling the members served by Novation to better control the economics and quality of major joint replacement as well as other surgical categories.
“We partner with suppliers that deliver excellent savings and value to the members we serve,” said Pete Allen, area senior vice president, sourcing operations, Novation. “Intralign is an organization that offers members care efficiency with a particular specialty in total joint replacement procedures, which are growing rapidly. Gaining control of the cost drivers in the intra-operative space is critically important to our members as they shift to emerging care delivery models and seek ways to improve the cost and quality of care.”
Intralign’s integrated suite of services includes intra-operative clinical support, which makes Surgical First Assistants (SFAs) available to the hospital, saving resources while ensuring the best quality support in the intra-operative process. SFAs are clinicians who have specialized training in surgery as well as appropriate license and certification to help with the procedure. Staffing models that increase involvement of mid-level qualified talent help optimize physician involvement, increase efficiency of care and can ultimately increase throughput. The benefit of intra-operative support is enhanced by Intralign’s analytics services, which monitor and collect data on key metrics in the operating room – such as implant utilization and cost to surgical and anesthesia time – to identify opportunities for improvement in care delivery. Finally, the company also offers intelligent care design support to help providers optimize the flow of people and activities in the operating room, so that ideal efficiencies and quality goals are realized.
“To be awarded a supplier contract with Novation is a significant confirmation of Intralign’s value proposition,” said Rick Ferreira, president and CEO of Intralign. “Our services are really resonating with providers because we offer a unique approach to achieving sustainable care efficiencies for the delivery of orthopedic and other types of surgery. Intralign can help them better understand how and where resources are being used, how to optimize those resources and, finally, how to enhance the management of specialized clinical labor to increase throughput.”

DOTmed.com Jan 21, 2013 –
Intralign, a new health care consulting services company that got off the ground on Dec. 31, 2012, aims to help hospitals move toward more value-based delivery models — something hospitals are being forced to align with under health care reform.

“Hospitals have to increase efficiencies in the operating room especially,” Lars Thording, vice president of marketing and public affairs at Intralign, told DOTmed News.
The new company, comprising former Stryker Sustainability Solutions executives including Thording, made a strategic decision to focus specifically on knee and hip replacements, an area in the OR that’s experiencing growth and at the same time straining federal health care costs, according to Thording.
“When you look at knee and hip surgery, the money is really spent during the intra-operative process,” he said. “This is when the hip or knee is actually being implanted in the OR by a surgeon.”
One part of Intralign’s intra-operative services solution includes trained professionals known as Surgical First Assists who provide clinical support to the surgeon. Not only do these clinicians help surgeons improve quality, said Thording, but they are also there to help with utilization decisions like figuring out what types of implants and disposables to use.
“That helps reduce waste in the OR and also reduce time of surgery,” said Thording. “That means you can handle more patients without sacrificing quality.”
Ideally, this kind of clinical support is combined with analytics and processes — part of Intralign’s business model — designed to help hospitals improve quality and transition from traditional fee-for-service care to reimbursements based on performance and quality.

MedCityNews Jan 21, 2013 –
Efficiency in the OR is key to quicker, better quality joint replacements in this startup’s eyes
As more people, and younger people, are opting for joint replacement surgeries, hospitals are looking for ways to improve the turnover time for these procedures.
Meanwhile, they’re also innovating toward value-based care. With that in mind, a collection of healthcare entrepreneurs who have made careers out of finding ways to reduce wasteful healthcare spending has come together to help hospitals improve efficiencies in total joint replacement procedures.
Although the entire joint replacement process can take up to a year and a half, 40 percent of the cost for providers is concentrated during the short time of the operation, said Lars Thording, vice president of marketing and public affairs for Intralign. The startup has designed a suite of services to help providers who are transitioning to value-based reimbursement models increase the efficiency of the more than 1 million knee and hip arthroscopies that are performed in the U.S. annually.
“What we see is that in that intraoperative sequence, there’s a lot of variability in how much that costs,” Thording said. “There’s a lot of room to create efficiency by creating standards and by putting someone in that room who can make decisions.”
Intralign was founded last fall by executives who built Ascent Healthcare Solutions, a medical device reprocessing and remanufacturing company that was sold to Stryker in 2009. Those same executive also form the core team behind the Alliance Healthcare Partners, an angel fund that invests in early stage companies focused on cutting healthcare costs.
“We’re folks that like to challenge the system and create some fundamental changes because they’re called for,” Thording said. “We look for solutions that aren’t new, fancy devices.”
At the core of its offerings is a Surgical First Assistance service in which Intralign trains and implements surgical assistants to maximize efficiency in the operating room. The idea is that with training specifically for these procedures, surgical assistants will be able to help surgeons make better utilization decisions during a joint replacement; for example, they can make educated decisions about which brand of implant is most appropriate to use and what disposables are needed. They may also be able to reduce the time of a procedure, improve surgeon satisfaction and improve the quality of the procedures performed.
“If you have [a surgical assist] that has the right kind of competency, what you achieve is, frankly, the surgeon becomes more efficient in what he’s doing,” Thording said.
To further optimize joint replacements, Intralign is developing two other components to its service. The first is an analytics solution to help providers identify their biggest cost drivers and manage their spending. The second is a care design service to help them map out the most optimal surgical processes. For example, it might find that a hospital could improve its efficiency in the time it takes to fill out a surgical order, or be more efficient with staff time.
“It’s all about use of data and process redesign,” Thording said. “It’s about eliminating from that intraoperative episode everything that is inefficient and does not drive better quality.”
Those services are part of Intralign’s long-term goal of creating a comprehensive solution that has staying power in a hospital. For now, the team is working on building out its service offerings and implementing the surgical assist solution in more hospitals.
“Consultants leave this big, fat report and two weeks later, everything is back to normal,” Thording said. “We looked at a service solution that can stay with the hospital and create substantial and sustainable changes — one that has staying power.”

Intralign will help hospitals move from volume-based to value-based delivery models
Scottsdale, AZ Jan 7, 2013 – Intralign, a newly-formed specialty healthcare services provider, today announced availability of its intra-operative services solution – part of a broader integrated suite of services – designed to help providers who are preparing for and transitioning to value-based reimbursement models for major joint replacement. Intralign’s highly trained Surgical First Assists can improve surgical performance and better inform utilization decisions to control costs and improve intra-operative efficiency. Combined with Intralign’s Advanced Analytics and Intelligent CareDesign services, its Intra-Operative Support solution leverages the potential of analytics and process design to help providers optimize quality and cost in the intra-operative process – and further enable the provider to improve the value of major joint replacement.
“Providers are seeking to transition their care-delivery approach due to increased demand and changing reimbursement models. Intralign delivers novel and results-oriented solutions to help providers understand cost drivers, improve operational control, coordinate processes, and consistently manage spend and quality in major joint replacement. Intralign services will help hospitals and surgeons work together to transition from traditional volume-based to value-based delivery models. The key is to align clinical quality measures with operational efficiency – in a way that relates to performance-based reimbursement,” said Rick Ferreira, president and CEO of Intralign.
Developing solutions to help providers navigate the changing healthcare environment and move toward a more financially sustainable future is not new to Intralign company executives. Intralign was founded by executives who built the nation’s leading third-party reprocessing company, Ascent Healthcare Solutions, which was sold to Stryker Corporation in 2009. Intralign comprises services and executive leadership joined from respected healthcare brands Neocure, Ximedica and United Surgical
Assistants.