Ochsner Health System employs 600 physicians and has 33 facilities located throughout southeast Louisiana. Language and Computing’s solutions combine the world’s largest and most comprehensive biomedical knowledgebase, LinkBase®, with healthcare’s most advanced NLP technology, TeSSI®. Ochsner will leverage TeSSI® to identify ICD-9-CM codes for Medicare Risk Adjustment (MRA) code reporting. MRA is designed to improve reporting of information to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which in turn is used to determine proper funding of Medicare healthcare organizations. The precision and accuracy of TeSSI®’s automated ICD-9-CM code reporting allows Ochsner to streamline the entire reporting process, therefore greatly reducing the time and cost of MRA reporting.

TeSSI® automatically determines which documents contain Medicare Risk Adjustment content for coding, eliminating a tedious and labor intensive effort and increasing overall productivity. When the appropriate documents have been identified, Language and Computing’s LinkCode™ accurately codes the selected documents based upon MRA standards and displays the results to the human coder. Combining the TeSSI® and LinkCode™ products has created a cost effective, automated process that has had a substantial impact on Ochsner’s MRA code reporting process.

“Ochsner is enthusiastic about using Language and Computing's technology for the MRA project. TeSSI® is the first NLP product we have seen that provides intelligent extraction of discrete data from clinical text. Their medical ontology is the real difference maker. We were delighted with how quickly L&C delivered the MRA customizations of TeSSI®. We are confident that we will realize an excellent return on our investment,” said Kent Boyer, Director of Medical Systems at Ochsner.

“Despite the implementation of an EMR system, as much as 80 percent of a healthcare organization’s information is still stored as free-text. Ochsner can now extract and reuse discrete data elements that otherwise sit within those free-text clinical documents; the result is unstructured medical documents that become functional databases and the driving force behind core programs such as coding, billing and quality of care initiatives. The application of L&C’s LinkBase® and TeSSI® NLP technology for Ochsner’s MRA coding project demonstrates the great value of the L&C technology to help solve the management issues faced by healthcare delivery organizations in a dynamic regulatory environment,” stated Peter Huisman, CEO of Language and Computing.

About Ochsner Health System
Ochsner Health System (www.ochsner.org ) is a non-profit, academic, multi-specialty, healthcare delivery system dedicated to patient care, research and education. The system includes seven hospitals, a sub-acute facility, and 33 health centers located throughout Southeast Louisiana. Ochsner employs over 600 physicians in 80 medical specialties and subspecialties and 450 clinical research trials annually. Ochsner was ranked one of the “Best Places to Work” by New Orleans CityBusiness in 2005, 2006 and 2007 and received the Consumer Choice for Healthcare in New Orleans for 12 consecutive years. Ochsner was ranked as “Best” Hospital by U.S. News and World Report in July 2007. Ochsner has over 10,000 employees system-wide.

About Language and Computing, Inc.
Language and Computing provides the most advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) solutions to the healthcare industry. Language and Computing’s NLP technology is built upon the world’s largest and most comprehensive biomedical ontology allowing for unstructured and structured data to be turned into meaningful information. Today their solutions are being leveraged to map medical vocabularies, improve patient safety and decision support, streamline patient data processes, and automate coding and reimbursement. Language and Computing is building solutions to improve the business of healthcare, life sciences and the management of knowledge through their advanced NLP technology. Language and Computing is a privately held company headquartered in Reston, Virginia. For more information about Language and Computing call 888.579.0682 or visit their website at www.landcglobal.com .

Contact:
Karen Kniffin
Language and Computing
Tel: 858.564.8769
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it