At the roughly 200-employee technology company Mr. Voddiraju had founded, everyone had a comprehensive benefits plan. But when he sold that company in 2011, he became one of a growing number of Americans who had selected a high-deductible health plan — without understanding what exactly it covered.
Staring at the stacks of bills, Mr. Voddiraju decided to use his technology and entrepreneurial background to create a tool that would help consumers understand what their health insurance plan covered and for what they as a patient would be financially responsible.
Out of this decision came HealthiPASS, an in-office patient collections system designed to ease the patient payment process. At check-in, patients enter their health insurance information at a self-serve kiosk, and the program uses the chargemaster and details about the insurance plan to calculate how much will be owed, and patients then enter their credit card or other payment information. Co-pays or other upfront fees are charged then, and the rest of the balance, if any, is charged after the office staff receives confirmation of the reimbursement amount from the insurer, usually within 48 to 72 hours.
“It’s a tremendously effective solution,” says Jeff Feeney, chief customer officer at HealthiPASS. “It’s using technology that has been used in other industries for years… we just ask the patient to swipe their card like they do at a hotel or at an airport to get their ticket.”
As a former healthcare executive, Mr. Feeney also realizes how advantageous this software could be to providers, especially as the number of patients with high-deductible health plans is on the rise. Because the amount owed by the patient is automatically charged to the card or account on file, patient payment is received promptly and office staff no longer have to track down patients for payment or write off unpaid balances. “You obviate any future bad debt from the patient, now the patient portion is the fastest-growing piece of office revenue,” he says.
HealthiPASS currently has a strong presence in the Chicago metropolitan area, mostly in physician offices but under contract with several large health systems and medical groups. The solution is designed to be deployed organization-wide — after the first visit, each patient can either use a free smartphone app or is given a QR code to further expedite the next check-in and help them track their household healthcare expenses.
The HealthiPASS solution is free to patients; the company takes a small “swipe fee” for each balance patients pay directly by credit card to providers. However, Mr. Feeney doesn’t think the swipe fee will come anywhere close to the amount of uncollected bills providers write off. “They’ll be able to make a quick financial decision, based on the prior year’s bad debt along with all the expenses associated with collecting bills,” he says. “As a career-long healthcare executive, I truly believe this is the missing link in healthcare revenue cycle management — patient-side collections made easy for everyone involved.”
More articles on patient payments:
4 notable healthcare finance stories from August 2014
100 things to know about Medicare reimbursement
Defining value: The case for including financial experience as a measure on hospital surveys
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