Medical records-retrieval company MediConnect Global Inc. is making a foray into providing Web access to personal health information with the acquisition of a Florida company.
MediConnect Global has purchased PassportMD Inc. and moved its operations to its South Jordan headquarters, the company said Monday. Of the 15 or so PassportMD employees, only a handful have been retained and will work remotely for their new Utah employer.
For a fee, MediConnect retrieves medical records from doctor's offices, insurance companies and others, puts them in digital form and sends to law firms and life and health insurance companies. Clients also include services such as Google Health, which makes records available to the patient. Like Google Health, PassportMD takes digital records and passes them on to consumers over the Internet.
"The most important part, which we had, was to get the records, because that's what it all starts with," said MediConnect Global CEO Amy Rees Anderson. "But this [deal] was a way to take the record and make it a lot more user friendly and add some educational content to it and add some things to it your doctor may not track."
Terms of the deal, which was negotiated during the holidays, were not disclosed. Both companies are privately held. MediConnect now employs 800 to 1,000 people, Anderson said.
Officials for MediConnect, which started in 1996, said it grew by nearly 800 percent from 2004-08. It was No. 172 on Deloitte LLP's Technology Fast 500 and was cited by Inc. magazine as one of the 500 fastest-growing U.S. companies in 2007.
PassportMD was one of four companies selected to provide access to electronic personal health records for Medicare beneficiaries in a pilot program in Utah and Arizona. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plan to roll out the program nationally if the pilot is successful.
Access to personal medical records "really puts you, as a patient, in control of your own health record," Anderson said. "It gives you all of your health records in one location where you can actually control it."
She said MediConnect has been evaluating various companies that provide access to medical records online but picked PassportMD because of its user-friendly approach.
For example, consumers can set up a telephone call that reminds them to take medications. They also can add information, such as on diet, weight or blood-sugar levels, to the online records. Information on medications and other health issues also are available.
Television personality Joan Lunden, co-host of ABC's Good Morning America from 1980 through 1997, has been part of PassportMD's marketing program.
