Newport Beach-based TriZetto Group Inc. plans to stay the course.
The provider of software and services is sticking with its mainstay customers,health plans and benefits administrators,for growth.
The company’s clients pay monthly fees to TriZetto, which acts as a consultant, tailoring its software and services to each.
TriZetto’s latest strategy: explore other ways to grow business with insurers and benefits administrators.
“We’re still going to sell primarily to payers,” Chief Executive Jeffrey Margolis said. “But it’s what payers have to do now that’s becoming interesting.”
One avenue: Creating, developing and selling products and services that help health plans and benefits administrators reach out to patients, doctors and hospitals.
TriZetto helps customers manage data by providing software and Web sites.
The company also runs sites that allow patients, doctors and insurers to track health information, appointments and claims.
One service TriZetto could offer: Software that allows health plans to provide a person’s health history to patients, including dates of previous hospital visits and claims data.
“Health plans are in a wonderful position to provide these personal health records, which are essentially health histories or health resumes, for consumers,” Margolis said.
Such a program would be quicker and less expensive than traditional electronic systems, in which medical records are kept in doctors’ offices and hospitals, Margolis said. The new program also would be designed to work with the traditional system.
Also on the drawing board: Software that would allow doctors and hospitals to calculate what a patient really owes at a point of service, Margolis said.
That plays into consumer-driven healthcare, which aims to make employees more accountable for their health costs.
As TriZetto looks to expand its offerings, research and development is important, Margolis said.
TriZetto spent 11% of its $292 million in annual revenue last year on research and development.
Through the first nine months of 2006, TriZetto’s spent about 12% of revenue on R & D.;
Research is “a critical component of how we think at TriZetto,” Margolis said.
TriZetto’s made a comeback on Wall Street during the past few years.
Three years ago, the company’s market value on Wall Street was only a fraction of what it is now,about $740 million at recent check.
Founded in 1997, TriZetto had to battle a dot-com stigma after its shares crashed in early 2000 and languished until early 2005.
Silicone’s Back
It took nearly 15 years, but silicone breast implants are coming back.
That means Irvine-based Allergan Inc. is gearing up for the relaunch.
Allergan said last month that the Food and Drug Administration approved its silicone-filled implants for breast augmentation, reconstruction and revision surgery.
Allergan gained breast implants, wrinkle fillers and a stomach band to fight obesity from its $3.2 billion buy of Santa Barbara’s Inamed Corp. earlier this year.
Silicone implants had been unavailable for nearly all American women since 1992, when regulators banned them in the wake of health concerns.
Only women who require reconstructive surgery after mastectomies have been allowed to use the implants.
For the larger cosmetic market, women have had to settle for saline-filled implants or get the work done overseas.
In a release, Allergan said that it was required to meet several post-market conditions as part of the approval.
Those include continuing its clinical study until all patients receive a 10-year evaluation and distributing a breast surgery patient planner to doctors and patients regarding the risks associated with implants.
Bits and Pieces:
Irvine-based Cortex Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it filed a shelf registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that would allow it to offer and sell up to $35 million of stock. Cortex said it planned to use proceeds from the sale to speed development of its Ampakine compound, for working capital and other general corporate purposes Anaheim’s Alliance Imaging Inc. priced a secondary public offering of 8 million shares by some stockholders at $5.75 each. Alliance, a provider of diagnostic tests to hospitals and doctors, said it wasn’t receiving any proceeds. Separately, Alliance Chief Executive Paul Viviano spoke at events sponsored by US Bancorp Piper Jaffray and McDermott, Will & Emery last week Irvine-based less-invasive heart valve developer CoreValve Inc. said that 100 patients in nine worldwide clinical trials have undergone aortic heart valve replacement with its Percutaneous ReValving system Mission Hospital Medical Center in Mission Viejo said it received a select practice national quality leadership designation for cardiac bypass surgery from CareScience, a division of Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Quovadx Inc. CareScience works with hospitals to develop improvement programs for quality of care.
