Verge Health Announces Partnership with Orange County Health Care Agency for Health Plan Credentialing

Charleston, SC, December 4, 2019 — Verge Health, the healthcare industry’s leading governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) company, and Orange County Health Care Agency (HCA) announce their partnership for Health Plan Credentialing which began earlier this fall. Verge Health will assist HCA by performing credentialing services for its managed care network including onboarding, re-credentialing, and maintenance.

HCA is a regional provider charged with protecting and promoting individual, family and community health through coordination of public and private sector resources. In 2019, Orange County Health Care Agency sought a credentialing vendor for its 2,000 providers which includes: Licensed Psychologists, Licensed Clinical Social Workers, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists, Licensed Professional Counselors, Psychiatrists, Nurse Practitioners, and Physicians.

Recent Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) changes requires health plans to establish a uniform credentialing and re-credentialing policy that addresses behavioral health and substance use disorder services, providers. The credentialing process is one component of the comprehensive quality improvement system to help strengthen access to mental health and substance use disorder services for Medicaid beneficiaries. Verge is excited to partner with HCA to ensure compliance with these new regulations.

Verge Health President, Chris Malanuk, said, “As reflected by our KLAS Research recognition as an industry leader in credentialing, we continue to support our clients by leveraging technology to evolve and improve practitioner management. We provide a comprehensive practitioner management application to provide a turnkey credentialing, privileging and performance monitoring solution to ensure safe, high-quality patient care. We value this new partnership with HCA in support of their mission to protect and promote the health of the communities they serve.” KLAS Research is a healthcare IT data and insights company providing the industry with accurate, honest, and impartial research on the software and services used by providers and payers worldwide.

About Verge Health

Founded in 2001, Verge Health is a Governance, Risk, and Compliance software and services company. Verge Health’s software solutions enable healthcare organizations to proactively protect and defend patients, caregivers, and frontline staff, against errors, adverse events, and policy violations. With over 900 facilities and 500,000 active users, the company’s Converge Platform provides hospitals and healthcare organizations with cross-functional, proactive tools that drive optimal quality and safety results while also leveraging integrated services offerings to enhance performance and achieve success with high-reliability initiatives. Learn more at https://www.vergehealth.com

About Orange County Health Care Agency

The Orange County Health Care Agency is a regional provider, charged with protecting and promoting individual, family and community health through coordination of public and private sector resources. HCA’s service environment is complex, with 180 different funding sources and over 200 state and federal mandates. The mandates under which HCA operates require the County of Orange to provide for or to regulate certain health services. Many also carry specific requirements for staffing, operations, claiming and record-keeping.

Many of HCA’s services are preventive in nature and therefore are not readily apparent to the public. Some examples of services include food protection, hazardous waste regulation, water quality monitoring and pollution prevention, mental health services, alcohol, and drug use services, preventive health services for the aging, healthcare for incarcerated individuals, communicable disease control, child health, and disability program, immunizations, public health field nursing, and public health clinics.