MedAlign History
Clinton Ashford, MD, who has been practicing OB/GYN in Athens Georgia since 1982, developed the MedAlign methodology.
In 1993, Dr. Ashford shared the frustration of his peers as the federal government planned for a centralized agency that would administer all health care in the US. The principal justification for such an agency was that current medical utilization methods not only placed onerous restrictions on physicians and patients, but also failed to hold down healthcare costs. Rising costs and utilization in turn led to insurance being excessively expensive, restricting access to healthcare for many.
Dr. Ashford looked for ways to bring free-market forces to bear on the utilization of healthcare in a way that would not be detrimental to either physicians or their patients. Years of research led to the formation of MedAlign, a methodology that pays physicians an additional fee for managing the care of their patients in a higher-quality and a more cost-effective fashion. Dr. Ashford then proceeded with the creation of the software and services that would enable this concept to be implemented.
Health Partners, Incorporated (Georgia S Corp, 1997) and Celadon Health (Delaware C Corp, 1999) were both created to develop the software and obtain the vital opportunity to trial the concept. The enabling software was developed but was never implemented by HPI or Celadon.
During the period of 2002 to 2006, there was no business imperative in the health industry to embrace a new concept when the current fee for service system was functioning and paying well. Despite genuine interest from multiple payers and provider groups, it became clear that MedAlign was "before its time."
After incorporating MedAlign in 2004, Dr. Ashford decided to consolidate and protect the MedAlign concept and its intellectual property. He also deferred its marketing until a business imperative was evident which in turn would provide funding for the final development of MedAlign.
MedAlign has developed extensive and valuable intellectual property.
- Ten years of planning, design, development, and implementation have created a storehouse of knowledge with respect to the problems and solutions associated with incentives for efficiency improvement in healthcare.
- MeAlign staff developed considerable intellectual property in the areas of physician incentives, paying for non-events, acuity adjustment, reconstitution of episodes of care, physician attribution, comorbidities, unintended consequences, physician gaming, ETL automation, and configurably supporting a wide variety of quality measures involving process and outcomes.
- In the development of products and services for former and existing clients, MedAlign has written a great deal of computer source code to accompany its design and planning work. This code represents valuable intellectual property and would serve as a basis for the completion of the MedAlign system.