Medical Lockbox
Banks have a number of ways they can grow by offering new services in the healthcare payments space. This healthcare payments video series features interviews with Mark Brousseau, President of Brousseau & Associates. In these forward thinking interviews, Mr. Brousseau provides insight to the marketplace of healthcare payments by helping to identify the challenges in today’s market, identify a path toward streamlining revenue cycle management and offers a roadmap for banks to better support the needs of healthcare providers.
Read MoreFormer Health and Human Services Secretary and Governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson is interviewed by healthcare payments expert, Mark Brousseau, President of Brousseau & Associates in Q&A Session #11. Gov. Thompson believes financial institutions, including all banks, can add value to the revenue cycle process. Banks can be a supportive member of an integrated system for healthcare providers.
Read MoreFormer Health and Human Services Secretary and Governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson is interviewed by healthcare payments expert, Mark Brousseau, President of Brousseau & Associates in Q&A Session #10. Gov. Thompson talks about the role of banks in automating healthcare payments. Healthcare expenditures are 20% of the GDP, so banks should want to lead the industry in order to maximize the revenue opportunities.
Read MoreHave you heard the news? Again! ICD-10 is pushed back another year for implementation. Behind the controversy of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a tsunami brewing within the healthcare industry. Many were concerned about the overhead and conversion costs, so pressure was building as the deadline was lurking in October 2014. It might have been another “Y2K”, in that proper planning and execution would have mitigated the risks and made the transition more like a little storm rather than a tsunami… but we will never know for 2014.
Read MoreThe Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, is unlikely to bring together Republicans and Democrats. But ACA is bringing innovation to healthcare payments arena. Standards within the law make it easier to reconcile electronic funds transfer (EFT) payments, most commonly Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions, received by providers with the corresponding electronic remittance advice (ERAs), including EDI 835 or EOBs.
Read MoreLet’s say that a financial institution (FI) wants to provide a medical lockbox processing solution to its existing healthcare provider customers and/or prospective customers outside its geographic branch locations. Ideally the system would process both insurance payments as well as patient payments. In order to get into this business, particularly capturing and scanning EOBs, the FI will need to follow the rules and regulations around HIPAA/HITECH; a potentially daunting and intimidating process!
Read MoreHealthcare providers have one of the most complex payment cycles. One would think that most would simply outsource the lockbox function to a service provider or financial institution (FI). Unfortunately, FI’s struggle in many ways to sell medical lockbox processing. But why? Many of the FI’s officers are not hunter sales people. They are account managers who farm a territory. Convincing a provider to outsource their entire operation, or switch from another is a major decision which involves a strong business case as well as long-term strategy. Account managers (AM) are used to visiting accounts, chatting about customer service and managing a relationship. They don’t have highly compensated sales programs which motivates the AM to have a strong, sometimes uncomfortable sales closing process.
Read MoreWorking with a financial institution for healthcare payment processing via a medical lockbox is an excellent method to eliminate inefficient in-house manual processes for healthcare providers. Providers can typically reduce overhead, improve collections in receivables, decrease bad debt/write-offs, reduce fraud and eliminate paper in the office. While the benefits can be impressive, selecting the right vendor can often be a confusing task.
Read MoreMedical lockbox environments have been around for many years now, but addressing the needs of Healthcare Providers (HCPs) is not always an easy task given the current landscape of payments combined with the uncertainty of governmental healthcare programs.
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