MedFusion relaunched as part of IntuitHealth

As an independent company Medfusion was focused on enabling doctor-patient communication and pushing the medical home model, in which doctors are paid for keeping people well.

As IntuitHealth it is now managing a full suite of payment services as well, from its base in Cary, North Carolina.

In addition to its existing "patient portal," through which patients can complete forms and make appointments online, Intuit can now offer patient payment services, and a health expense tracker, with major insurers UnitedHealth and CIGNA already lined-up.

All this puts Intuit at the center of some powerful health trends:

• Electronic Health Records can now be integrated into the payment stream. One of Intuit's payment partners is Allscripts, an online EHR company.
• Health Savings Accounts, increasingly popular with employers and insurers, can now be managed more easily through the health expense tracker, and become more popular.

Quicken now has service offerings that benefit patients, clinics, and insurers, and also integrate with its existing software and payment services.

It's another example of just how mainstream IT companies are moving into health care with offerings that do much more than health care specialists have been able to do before, just as growth within the industry accelerates.