'Medicare Advantage-in-a box' by nirvanaHealth is on Amazon Web Services

Photo: Erik Isakson/Getty Images

nirvanaHealth has announced that Aria Medicare, its robotic process automation cloud-based platform for healthcare, is now available on Amazon Web Services.

A subsidiary of RxAdvance, nirvanaHealth spent the last two-and-a-half years combining both its pharmacy benefit manager and payer platform assets into the single Aria platform, which it refers to as "Medicare Advantage-in-a-box."

The platform is designed to simplify Medicare Advantage operations end-to-end for any health plan and speed the onboarding process for new MA providers by offering intelligence-driven risk management and eliminating the need to utilize multiple vendors and platforms.

Aria is built with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms made up of several different robotic process automation (RPA) modules.

It also lets MA plans distribute and manage risk with risk partners, such as Independent Practice Associations (IPAs) and Management Services Organizations (MSOs), keeping them in compliance with strict guidelines regulating everything from administrative and marketing requirements to risk score management functional requirements.

Each module is made up of hundreds of RPA bots integrated within the core healthcare transaction cycle to help automate and manage various clinical, medical, care management, quality and risk-management functions.

Modules can link to each other within the larger Aria platform or can be plugged into current systems, to improve existing capabilities or to create additional functional capabilities.

By deploying automation with built-in compliance, payers offering MA plans can rely on a "digital workforce," which frees up human resources for all transactional tasks.

WHY THIS MATTERS

As enrollment in Medicare Advantage continues to grow and an aging Baby Boom generation contributes to the rising cost of care, payers are looking to automation to keep costs down, all while healthcare spending for working Americans reaches an all-time high.

By sharing actionable intelligence directly into workflows, including gaps in care, continuity of care, and accurate risk-adjustment, Aria can help improve care quality ratings, and better ensure appropriate care to the patient, the company said.

The use of a comprehensive platform can simplify the extremely fragmented processes dogging MA plans that utilize multiple legacy vendors, making it easier for payers to offer plans that are compliant, more cost-effective and more highly rated. Advancements in automation are already cutting into the rising costs of manual healthcare transactions, according to February report from healthcare technology and research firm CAQH.

THE LARGER TREND

This summer, AWS announced its own plan to drive digital health innovation with the launch a new accelerator that offered 10 startups a chance to participate in a four-week training and mentorship program.

Amazon has been joined by tech giants like Google, Apple and Facebook, which have all rolled out new digital health-focused initiatives within the last year.

ON THE RECORD

"This truly is Medicare Advantage-in-a-box. No other singular platform in the market today is capable of managing Medicare Advantage as comprehensively or intelligently as Aria," John Sculley, chairman of nirvanaHealth, said in a statement.

"Empowered by platform-driven intelligence, MA plans can allocate human capital more wisely to focus on things that require human touch, such as member healthcare experience, social determinants of health, wellness regimens, care management, quality rating and risk management, and total cost-of-care."

Twitter: @dropdeaded209
Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com