Medipattern Corp. and HealthcareIQ LLC this week announced a strategic alliance that allows Medipattern’s clients access to payer-specific benefit plan rules, coding guidelines, and medical necessity protocols. To date, the alliance has benefited Medipattern’s clients through both claims submission support and the successful receipt of reimbursements for the reporting of findings used to evaluate and manage patient care and provide diagnostic indicators that substantiate evidenced-based medicine, all obtained through use of B-CAD. Nationally recognized healthcare insurance companies are paying for the supervision of the B-CAD evaluation and management procedure for reporting and review by radiologists.

“B-CAD is a procedure performed on outpatients using breast ultrasound images and as such is reimbursable under the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Common Procedure Terminology (CPT) code guidelines for evaluation and management procedures,” said Arthur Gelber, president and CEO of HealthcareIQ.

“B-CAD includes an automated workflow that naturally follows the radiologists’ process for correctly classifying lesions into corresponding American College of Radiology (ACR) Breast Imaging Reporting And Data System (BI-RADS) terminology, which forms the basis for evidence-based reporting and compliance with not only the ACR but payers’ guidelines for appropriate billing and reporting requirements,” said Jeff Collins, Medipattern CEO. “B-CAD’s ability to convert the details captured during the review of ultrasound breast images in a natural language report helps reduce the need for transcription as well as providing a comprehensive record for physicians to track patient progress as they manage the patients’ care. Breast care clinics need to be able to track subtle changes over the course of years to provide adequate patient care. B-CAD uses the ACR BI-RADS lexicon for evaluation of lesions and its structured reporting provides the necessary framework for evidence of tracking care over the long term.”