HEALTH FORMS ONLINE.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Brief Article

E-commerce may give a lift to health care's notorious administrative overload. Molar HMOs' websites give information on referral processes and benefits, but, "Everybody's been crying for years for electronic claims," noted Jim Hertel, publisher of the Colorado Managed Care Newsletter. "The problem is, so many physician's offices belong to so many health plans," he added. "It's very inefficient" for small doctor's offices to start an online system along with their present paper-based system.

As a result, numerous Colorado companies have tried to standardize competing health plans into one electronic claims management system. But the results have not been pretty. "They've almost universally gone down in flames," Hertel noted.

Enter Englewood-based XCare.net Inc., the product of John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s 1989 sale of its healthcare IT arm. Now, XCare.net counts Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser-Permanente and Aurora's American Medical Response among its clients. The company moved to Colorado from Albuquerque and doubled its workforce to 60 people in early 1999, with an eye on bringing managed care into the 21st century. Products and services target sectors ranging from laboratories and human...