Oncology Metrics and Altos Solutions to merge

Altos Solutions and Oncology Metrics llc, today announced the planned merger of the two companies, creating a combined technology and knowledge data company serving community-based oncology practices. The merged company will be known as Altos Solutions and will be headquartered in Los Altos, California.

The merger will provide Altos Solutions with additional management, sales, and marketing bench strength while providing Oncology Metrics with expanded marketing opportunities from among Altos’s growing customer base.

Oncology Metrics will become a division of Altos Solutions and will continue to build networks of community-based oncology centers, gathering the practices’ financial, operational, and clinical information to create and provide back to the practices powerful information that enables the physicians and their teams to make the best decisions about treating patients and running their businesses.

The corporate focus will continue to be on web-based oncology office systems in recognition of the steady revenue potential and anticipated market growth. The development of networks of oncology practices will continue to provide access to best-in-class practices for research and financial, operational and clinical benchmarking.

“The oncology field is seeing two major sea changes right now. One is the incentive to use technology in a manner that improves outcomes and efficiency. The second is to measure and document the quality of care an oncology office provides,” reported Warren M. Dodge, CEO of Oncology Metrics, llc. “Altos Solutions and Oncology Metrics are on the leading edge of both these changes and by working together, we can provide oncology offices with important tools to position themselves to improve patient care and take advantage of the changing reimbursement environment.”

“The timing was perfect to bring together our two oncology-focused companies to take advantage of both our teams’ strength and make a powerhouse in the community-based oncology practice arena,” said Altos founder, CEO and chief architect, John Willey. “With the Federal stimulus program’s financial incentives to physicians who adopt electronic medical record systems and can demonstrate ‘meaningful use’, we anticipate a surge in physician offices implementing EMR systems. The $36 billion earmarked for implementing technology to make healthcare safer and more effective will be a strong driver for practices to move into technology in a more meaningful way as well as use benchmarking data to prove efficiency and quality.”

The importance of developing and using demonstrable quality improvement programs in health care is a top priority of policy makers, government, and the medical establishment. The key to electronic medical records playing a role in this lies in not just inputting data into an electronic record form but then extracting the data, interpreting the results and using that new knowledge to provide better, more cost effective treatment. Data benchmarking and analysis are the twin keys to turning raw EMR data into knowledge that can improve healthcare. The merger of Altos and Oncology Metrics will for the first time bring these two capabilities together.