Seeing opportunity in America’s fast growing $25-billion healthcare industry and current focus on healthcare reform, ePLDT’s business process outsourcing (BPO) subsidiary, SPi, bought Laguna Medical Systems, Inc. (LMS) for $8.25 million this week.

Including LMS's service offerings in Spi’s Healthcare portfolio will allow the BPO to strengthen its relationships with more than 400 hospitals, multi-specialty clinics and physician practices it serves. In addition, it increases Spi’s Healthcare-specific employee base to more than 2,000 worldwide.

The 22-year-old LMS employs over half a hundred regionally-based consultants assisting more than 200 hospitals in their coding and billing compliance as well as in entitled reimbursements for patient services. LMS also offers Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) defense and recovery services to help healthcare providers manage and defend RAC audits.

“We have been tracking companies in the coding compliance space to acquire one with a corporate culture that matches our own and LMS fits the bill,” revealed Peter Maquera, SPi President and CEO. “Their capabilities complement our existing medical transcription, billing and revenue cycle management services and provide an excellent, new entry point for us into this $25 billion industry."

The US healthcare industry accounts for 16 percent of US GDP and is the largest segment in the US economy, he explained. With the US government now requiring healthcare providers to achieve a 95 percent or greater accuracy rate on medical coding, inexperienced healthcare providers with limited resources are expected to struggle to comply.

This is a big opportunity for well-funded and managed service providersm according to Maquera. Furthermore, the US government's RAC program will soon expand its coverage, from hospitals to physicians in all states. All the more reason to enter this coding marketplace.

LMS will allow SPi to hasten its growth and strengthen our position in the BPO arena, he stressed.

SPi's wholly-owned medical billing and revenue cycle management company, Springfield Service Corporation (SSC), looks forward to merging its service offerings with LMS.