by JESSICA DAMASSA

“There’s $4-$4.5 trillion dollars of annual spend in the healthcare system. A trillion of that is administrative. And, some big chunk — some BIG number that you measure in the 100’s of billions of dollars – is waste. So, the TAM for what Availity and Diameter Health are going to do together is huge.” Russ Thomas, Availity’s CEO, is clearly excited about his company’s recent acquisition of Diameter Health and we ask him – and Diameter’s President & COO Mary Lantin – why this is such a big deal.

In the end, what this comes down to is making more sense of all the data that flows between providers and payers to automate where possible, find insights to improve business processes and workflows, and, ultimately, cut out that notorious “admin expense” that adds to healthcare cost without creating any value.

For twenty years, Availity’s been in the business of “translating” data from providers into a language health plans can understand, so payors could refine their own business processes and automate pre-auths, pay claims, etc. Diameter, on the other hand, deals in the world of clinical data and “upcycles” it into concepts and “digestible bites” that a health plan can use to automate an administrative workflow process with a provider and – get this – build a longitudinal health record that now Availity’s robust supply of claims and health plan data can fully flesh out.

How excited are Russ and Mary about the idea of this comprehensive, longitudinal, fully-integrated clinical-plus-claims patient record? Much more excited than even I anticipated! Tune in for all the details on the merger and this BIG vision for scaling up the fight against healthcare’s massive spend on administrative waste.