Nuance Communications announced today that it has acquired J.A. Thomas and Associates (JATA), a provider of physician-oriented, clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programs for the healthcare industry.
JATA helped establish the CDI industry and for more than two decades has provided technology and professional services that improve clinical documentation for healthcare providers. Its managed, end-to-end CDI solution has helped more than 500 hospitals improve patient care documentation by starting the CDI process with the physician at the point of care, resulting in more accurate and complete clinical documentation.
With JATA integrated into a single platform for end-to-end clinical documentation, the combined Nuance Healthcare solution is creating a revolutionary process for hospitals to efficiently transition to ICD-10 through the creation of more clinically accurate documentation. Nuance will deliver this capability by integrating the CDI strategies from JATA into Nuance’s Clinical Language Understanding (CLU) technology. Nuance CLU, enhanced with JATA CDI strategies, will power both Dragon Medical 360 physician solutions and Quantim HIM computer-assisted coding (CAC) and CDI solutions, creating a bridge between the clinically accurate patient record and the ICD-10 coded information.
“By integrating the clinical documentation improvement process into the physician workflow and leveraging CLU enhanced with JATA strategies, physicians can create the most accurate clinical documentation at the point of care,” said Janet Dillione, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Healthcare. “Together, we will help organizations improve efficiency, achieve the highest levels of clinical accuracy and appropriate reimbursement for the care provided so caregivers can focus on what’s most important, taking care of patients.”
“The J.A. Thomas and Quantim transactions build upon the strength of our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2012 performance and will be accretive in our fiscal year 2013,” said Paul Ricci, chairman and CEO of Nuance. “In combination, these acquisitions leverage our natural language understanding technology investment in a new growth market.”
