Sandata Technologies Aquires MCI Patents
Sandata Technologies Acquires Patents from MCI for Telephone-Based Personnel Tracking System Advanced technology improves accountability for child protective services, home health care and other off-site services Sandata expands licensing partners while pursuing aggressive patent enforcement campaign
Port Washington, NY – August 1, 2005 – Sandata Technologies, LLC, developer of Santrax the nation’s number one home health care and social services visit management solution, through its chairman, Bert E. Brodsky, today announced that it has acquired three patents (U.S. Patent Numbers: 5,255,183; 5,646,839; 5,963,912) from MCI, Inc. (Nasdaq: MCIP) for its Telephone-Based Personnel Tracking System. Previously, Sandata was the largest licensee of the technology from MCI. Santrax’ proprietary telephone-based tracking system records and verifies completion of off-site employee activities. For instance, home health care workers can dial into a toll-free number upon arrival to and departure from their assigned visit location. Santrax then time-stamps and date-stamps the call, and recognizes the location of origination to verify that the home care worker is in the
patient's home as required. During the departure call, the field worker uses the telephone keypad or speaks into the receiver and enters the tasks accomplished and service delivered during their visit. They can also dictate narrative progress notes about those contacts. The system automatically records visit information in its database, which can be retrieved via the Internet, in real-time, and enables companies, organizations, and governments to verify that critical services have been provided.
Stephen A. Silverstein, president of Sandata, stated, “Since first deploying this technology in 1994, our Santrax system has gained acceptance as the leading visit-management solution within the home health-care market—saving service delivery organizations and governments millions of dollars by reducing paperwork, ensuring workforce accountability, and reducing fraud. In fact, The City of New York's Human Resources Administration requires that any home health care agency that contracts with the city’s Home Attendant Program must use a ‘Telephony for Home Care’ system. The City of New York estimates its use of this system has saved the Medicaid program millions of dollars per year over the past 9 years. In addition, by reducing time spent on case notes and enabling case workers to dictate notes over the phone, Santrax has been shown to dramatically improve worker productivity.”
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has estimated that 10 percent of all health care
spending, billions of dollars annually, is lost to 'fraud and abuse.' By implementing the Santrax’ system, federal, state and local governments can significantly reduce fraud by verifying employee activities. Mr. Silverstein continued, “The market for remote workforce solutions goes well beyond the home health care market. A major focus of ours now includes child welfare and adult protective services. Any time an abused or neglected child is identified, it is imperative to verify that monitoring and protective services are provided on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this does not always occur, as required by law—often with tragic consequences. By verifying that these children are followed by government case workers, and that necessary interventions are provided, we can help to ensure that
senseless tragedies do not occur. We have recently begun working with several child welfare service providers to address these issues, and strongly believe this technology can ultimately save lives.” Commenting on the new patents, Mr. Silverstein dded, “Acquiring these patents from MCI was invaluable, as it enables us to expand into new markets and develop new applications for the technology. We are also seeking new licensing partners across a wide array of industries to develop and market additional applications outside our areas of expertise. Examples of industries that require monitoring of off-site workers include security, construction, delivery, janitorial, temporary staffing and many others.”
“As a result of acquiring these patents, we inherited a number of licensing relationships and have begun a series of initiatives in support of our new partners. Given our extensive experience deploying this technology, we are now offering our partners web hosting capabilities and outsourced data processing. These added services will help our partners reduce their overall expenditures versus operating their own data center. We also provide our partners data redundancy and full disaster recovery.” Mr. Silverstein concluded, “We have also identified companies that are currently infringing upon our patents. Now that Sandata owns these patents, we plan to immediately and aggressively pursue our
intellectual property rights.”
About Sandata Technologies, LLC
Sandata Technologies provides information technology solutions that yield administrative cost savings, streamline operational procedures, and significantly reduce the paperwork burdens for companies and organizations with remote workforces. Sandata’s Santrax is a telephone-based system that verifies patient coverage in the home by combining telephones with computers and an internally developed software application. Santrax generates over 45 million home health care calls annually, and continues to grow. Sandata’s HC Plus is a comprehensive and flexible scheduling, compliance, payroll, and billing system for home health agencies. HC Plus is Windows-based, HIPAA-compliant and delivered over the Web as an ASP via secure, encrypted technology. Sandata
also provides a range of Information Technology services, such as designing, installing, integrating and supporting computer networks, email, Internet, and Intranet systems. Sandata also provides annual hardware and software maintenance services.
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