ROCKVILLE, Md. -- Geisinger Health Plan, one of the largest, not-for-profit rural health maintenance organizations (HMO) in the U.S., has decided to migrate to the AMISYS Advance payer software application from Amisys Synertech Inc., the market leader of advanced software products and world-class outsourcing and claims processing services for healthcare payers.

Geisinger Health Plan serves the healthcare needs of approximately 240,000 members in 40 counties throughout central and northeastern Pennsylvania. Officials at Geisinger Health Plan, which currently uses the AMISYS 3000 healthcare payer information system, anticipate that the migration to AMISYS Advance will take one year to complete. The process will include hardware acquisition and configuration; training on IT operations and development practices; data migration; software migration and integration with new third-party products; and testing.

"After a careful evaluation of alternatives, we determined that AMISYS Advance offered the most effective and efficient means for us to continue to provide a high level of service to our customers," said Bernie Huff, vice president for information technology at Geisinger Health Plan. "AMISYS' proven architecture allows us to adapt quickly to changing market conditions."

AMISYS Advance is designed to provide better predictability and control of the complex business processes of medium and large health plans. It has a superior design that makes maintenance simpler and provides valuable population isolation tracking and rules-driven, customized interventions.

Running on the Unix operating platform with an Oracle database, it delivers high first-pass rates, reducing the cost of manual processing. Future enhancements for Release 2 include a Web-native GUI front-end written in Java as well as new tools that enable healthcare payers to service the latest consumer-directed health plans, including FSAs, HRAs and HSAs. Over the next three years, Amisys Synertech plans to substantially enhance the product by adding new features and functionality as well as many new software modules to the system.

AMISYS Advance hosting options are available exclusively through Amisys Synertech, both during the transition from AMISYS 3000 to AMISYS Advance and on a permanent basis. Amisys Synertech offers the largest business process outsourcing operations and ASP services specifically focused on the healthcare payer industry.

About Amisys Synertech, Inc.

Amisys Synertech Inc. (www.asihealth.com) advances health plan business through its industry-leading products and services. The company delivers comprehensive, mission-critical information management software products and Web capabilities that meet the needs of nearly every healthcare payer model. Amisys Synertech also provides leading business process outsourcing and application hosting for health plans, supporting a multimillion-member base through its claims processing and consumer-directed services. Amisys Synertech has offices in Rockville, Md., Harrisburg, Pa., Dubuque, Iowa and Alpharetta, Ga.