Clinical Outcomes Management Systems Raises $1.2 Million

July 29, 2009 by Chris Seper^*: www.medcitynews.com

HUDSON, Ohio — Clinical Outcomes Management Systems (COMS Interactive, LLC), which services long-term nursing facilities, has raised about $1.2 million, according to a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

The COMS Executive team noted that the company, which is clinically focused on disease management, was co-founded by Dr. Thomas Riemenschneider and James Riemenschneider, both of whom have extensive experience in the long-term care industry.  Dr. Riemenschneider’s expertise in clinical intelligence and applications methodologies is a direct result of 16+ years as a healthcare consultant to nursing homes, hospitals, medical schools, healthcare systems, and physician groups.  James Riemenschneider served as Regional Director of Operations at Foundation Health Services where he spearheaded the successful turnaround and management of various long-term care facilities.  See full biographies of the entire Executive Team on the COMS website.

The focus of the entire long-term care continuum is to improve the quality of care, stabilize the disease management profile, and improve overall quality of life for each resident.

The infusion of capital will ignite a sales effort for the Service as a Software (SaaS) business.  The Cleveland area company, which was created by STA Healthcare, Inc. has documented that its software and services can guide long-term care facilities by increasing overall quality of care, empowering nursing teams to manage the residents’ diseases, and as such, be reimbursed for a higher level of service. 

In addition to significantly improving the quality of care, skilled nursing facilities can improve financial outcomes by a) increasing occupancy, b) increasing the ratio of skilled beds, and c) providing point-of-care services which can be reimbursed at a later date.

Of particular importance, the Executive team noted that the COMS Disease Management system has been shown to dramatically reduce hospital readmissions - by up to 50%.  Hospital readmission is a key component to the current national healthcare reform dialog on reducing healthcare costs.  A recent Medicare report shows a staggering percentage of patients are readmitted to hospitals after being discharged.  By reducing the rate of readmission, the COMS system helps lower healthcare costs across the board.

The COMS product tracks the diseases which regularly cause the most problems for long-term care residents, provides appropriate interventions/actions, and more efficiently manages residents as they are admitted to and discharged from a facility.

A resident’s primary disease is difficult to a) manage, b) identify the progression, c) provide intervention, and d) improve clinical outcomes.  Having said this, the COMS data shows that, in fact, the greatest challenge may lie in the host of secondary diseases and afflictions for each resident.

“COMS Interactive will use most of the additional funding to engineer and deliver the product,” said Edward Tromczynski, who joined COMS Interactive as Chief Executive Officer four months ago. Tromczynski co-founded the travel software and services company PlanSoft, which is now part of StarCite.

Since April the company has raised capital, consolidated a disparate 15-member full-time workforce into the Cleveland area, and completed a new version of its product now being offered to the market. “Our products and services will be deployed into eight nursing homes over the next eight weeks,” Tromczynski said.

The company is positioned to take advantage of an increasing aging population while providing data on the best ways to deal with residents who often are dealing with more than a half-dozen afflictions from diabetes, to Alzheimer’s, to congestive heart failure.  Long-term care providers will be able to use COMS Interactive services to quickly review case histories of several nursing assessments for each resident.  Future versions of the COMS product will offer benchmarking data for comparing residents’ similar afflictions, as well as residents that match the age, gender and other similar profile characteristics.

The COMS product suite focuses on connecting all stakeholders in the long-term care marketplace including families and residents, nursing teams, physicians, ownership and management groups, and even pharmacy organizations.

“We’re looking at ownership and management groups - with from 2 to 200 skilled nursing care facilities,” Tromczynski said. “The benefit for the product is more than individual homes.  Multi-facility ownership and management groups can set standards, run reports from data sets, and improve overall efficiency by leveraging the COMS product at a corporate level.”

The funding was led by the following Cleveland institutional investors: Carleton Advisors, Portal Capital and Zapis Capital Group.