Technology

MediGain targets 400% growth in 2 years

by Surekha GALAGODA

MediGain, one of the fastest growing companies in the US healthcare financial services sector is expecting a 400 per cent growth in the next two years, said president Hunter Howard. He saw the US team handling the sales, marketing, accounts management while the operations are handled by the Sri Lankan Team. The company invests a substantial amount of funds on training its staff.

Staffers at work

MediGain recruits the best and the brightest and give them intensive training so that they are on par with any person in the world. The physician or the hospital is responsible for proper filing of insurance claims to the various insurance companies to receive payment for the services they have already provided. Howard said that in the USA after the doctors treat their patients they have to overcome many hurdles to obtain the money from insurance companies. "We at MediGain liaise between the doctor and the insurance company and get every cent due, while taking away the hassle for the doctors". The insurance company becomes more profitable when they have lower and fewer payments to make on their insured members, by denying, rejecting or losing claims. A cumbersome, bureaucratic process makes it difficult for the physicians to receive all the money that is due to them. Prior to working with MediGain, Doctors would forget about the small amounts due from insurance companies as they could not spend the time to collect these funds.

"The advantage with MediGain is that no amount is too small" said Howard.

The MediGain combination of US business management processes, technology and people have helped to increase the revenue of doctors and hospitals by 24 per cent.

At present MediGain employs 150 people. At 94 people per shift it can grow to 200 people at its existing location and plans are being made to increase the human resource capacity to 600 persons within the next two years. The people here are fantastic and that is what drew us to Colombo, said the President of the five-year-old BPO. He said that all staff interact on a daily basis with hospitals and doctors in the USA that is the reason we at MediGain give high priority to training of staff. This growth presents tremendous career opportunities as the company develops its Sri Lankan workforce over the next two years. "We are looking for only the highest calibre talent in and around Colombo that are capable of running and managing a large division in the very near future, said Howard. We are investing a lot of time and effort in developing our future leaders as we believe this is a critical step in becoming the leading Healthcare Services company". MediGain's success in the US Healthcare and Financial Services sector is due to its well-executed strategies, aggressive US Management style and sales force which is supported with a "Best in Class" Sri Lankan Operations team.

MediGain is finding rapid growth opportunities due to strategically selecting the recession proof US healthcare sector which allows continued growth. MediGain manages the revenue reimbursement process for US hospitals and physicians, utilises and develops the latest technologies, talented Sri Lankan resources, US management processes, and business analytics to generate more revenue at reduced costs. It is an effective and low cost business model, with the dedicated Operations Centre in Sri Lanka. Through the business model and resource advantage we are able to be more thorough than competitors. Our Sri Lanka Operations advantage allows us to offer quality assurance on each claim before submission to Insurer to improve resolution rates. By proactive follow-up with the insurer on every claim, questioning denied claims and questioning paid value until resolution, the company can offer better than industry standard reimbursement rates. A US based company could never afford this level of attention to detail.

HP takes lead from IBM on TOP500

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 17, 2008 - For the second consecutive year, the powerful and energy-efficient HP BladeSystem c-Class server has dominated the TOP500 list of the world's largest supercomputing installations by delivering a flexible architecture that provides customers with measurable cost, space and energy savings. Including systems built on HP ProLiant architecture, HP now commands a total of 41.8 per cent of systems on the TOP500 list, while IBM slipped to 37.6 per cent. HP BladeSystem powers 40.2 per cent of the systems on the most recently announced list; this represents more blade installations than all other vendors combined. Versatile, energy-efficient and affordable, HP blade servers provide customers with the maximum density required for high-performance and scale-out computing.

With 201 placements, the number of HP BladeSystem servers on the TOP500 list has increased by 5 percentage points compared to the June 2008 ranking and by 10 percentage points compared to June 2007. The number of high-performance computing (HPC) installations using blade servers on the TOP500 list has increased more than any other single computing architecture. In fact, blade-powered systems are increasingly replacing proprietary systems in the HPC area and legacy mainframe architecture in commercial environments. "Customers can maximise their high-performance computing investments while increasing energy efficiency with blades, clearly improving their bottom line," said Christine Martino, Vice president and General Manager, Scalable Computing and Infrastructure organisation, HP. "The continued dominance of HP BladeSystem customers on the TOP500 list demonstrates the growing market demand for industry-standard architecture that addresses a broader set of computing challenges at a far lower cost than proprietary systems and mainframes." Emphasising the strong momentum of HP blade technology in the market, the HP ProLiant BL2x220c G5 powers several of the most power efficient industry-standard supercomputing clusters, including WETA Digital Ltd. in New Zealand, Cyfronet in Poland and Columbia University in New York City. The BL2x220C G5 delivers up to 260 megaflops-per-watt ratio(1) running the TOP 500 Linpack Benchmark across a single, 32-node enclosure. This performance benefit, coupled with double the performance per rack, positions the HP BL2x220c as the leading server blade for customers that need maximum application performance without the additional infrastructure costs.