Fibroblast and Arizona Connected Care Partner

Fibroblast, the referral management platform, and Arizona Connected Care today announced a new partnership to transform the accountable care organization’s (ACO) referral management processes. Through the new agreement, Fibroblast will provide participating ACO providers with cutting-edge technology to streamline patient referrals, cut physician clerical work, and reduce cost as patients move between physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare services.

Arizona Connected Care, the Tucson-based ACO – which includes the Tucson Medical Center, TMC One, and El Rio Health Center – will use Fibroblast to bring its referral process into the digital age. Fibroblast’s web-based, HIPAA-compliant software will allow the ACO’s 450 providers to make quick and streamlined referrals and provide the high-efficiency care required of a value-based organization.

“Adopting Fibroblast will enable our organization to get to the next level of high quality, low cost care,” said David Yarger, COO of Arizona Connected Care, a leader in delivering value-based care. “Referrals and touch points between our providers are vulnerable to inefficiencies and can become a drain on our system. Fibroblast will streamline the process. Its technology will ensure that a patient is matched with the most appropriate doctor or service for that patient. And it will ensure that the patient’s important clinical information is shared with the right people, so the patient care get the care he or she needs, when they need it.”

Referral management can be a point of significant confusion and stress. Jumping between primary care providers, specialists, emergency rooms, and diagnostic testing facilities can be bewildering and discouraging for patients. So too, for their clinicians: they often refer patients to each other through labor-intensive, one-way processes like fax machines and pagers, rendering two-way communication between clinicians both time-consuming and onerous.

These administrative inefficiencies often drag the referral process to a halt, resulting in slower care and a complicated treatment experience for the patient, clerical headaches and frustrations for clinicians, and increased cost for health systems. But for the 300,000 patients that receive treatment through the Arizona Connected Care network, Fibroblast will refine and improve this rocky process.

“Improving the referral process will improve the patient experience overall. Our referral management technology allows clinicians to focus on delivering high-quality care, creating a smoother experience for patients and saving health systems money. We are delighted and honored to partner with Arizona Connected Care. It is truly a leader in value-based care and the transformation of healthcare delivery in our nation,” said Scott Vold, CEO and co-founder of Fibroblast.

The partnership will include a full rollout of Fibroblast’s technology at Arizona Connected Care member facilities, as well as an integration with Tucson Medical Center’s existing electronic medical record system. By partnering with Fibroblast, Arizona Connected Care provides its clinicians with a technological foundation to improve referral management, and continues to blaze the trail in delivering efficient and value-based medical care.

Fibroblast is a Chicago-based health technology company on a mission to fix the broken referral process to ensure that no patient falls through a crack in the healthcare system and misses out on potentially lifesaving care. Fibroblast automates the physician referral process and reduces patient leakage from provider networks, increasing revenue and mapping referral patterns in real-time. In the fee-for-service context, Fibroblast closes the referral loop to drive top-line revenues, increase patient satisfaction, and improve patient outcomes through better access to care. In the fee-for-value context, Fibroblast’s automated referral platform reduces risk by driving referrals to the highest quality, lowest cost providers, improving profitability, patient outcomes, and population health. Fibroblast is venture-funded, an alum of Excelerate Labs/TechStars and 1871, and a founding member of MATTER, a community of healthcare entrepreneurs and industry leaders working together in a shared space to individually and collectively fuel the future of healthcare innovation.

About Arizona Connected Care
Arizona Connected Care is Southern Arizona’s first Accountable Care Organization (ACO), comprised of primary care physicians, specialists, Tucson Medical Center, and other healthcare providers. Arizona Connected Care offers a new model for providing health care based on simple, straightforward goals and working with the latest available data to establish high quality practices. Arizona Connected Care is a collaborative, physician-driven organization that works in partnership with a local community-based hospital. Physicians hold the majority share of the organization and constitute the majority on its board of directors, and Tucson Medical Center is a valued minority shareholder.

Learn more at www.fibroblast.com