Selling top execs on records management

By Mark Brousseau

Every organization, regardless of industry, needs to have a records management policy, and they must have a records manager. Nonetheless, it can be an uphill climb convincing top managers to embrace records management, Kevin Joerling, senior project manager, records management, Perceptive Software, said yesterday at the company’s Inspire 2011 user conference at the Wynn in Las Vegas.

Records and information management is defined as the systematic control of records and information throughout their lifecycle, encompassing creation, use, storage, retention, and disposition. “Retention is where we find many companies are not doing a very good job – knowing how long to keep documents,” Joerling said

And this is an area where companies can waste a lot of money, Joerling said: For every $1 spent on disk storage, $3 to $8 per megabyte is spent on managing that storage, he explained. “In some cases, companies don’t even realize this,” he said.

Joerling said records and information is more important than ever because it: reduces storage costs; organizations information for quick retrieval; facilitates litigation risk avoidance; helps protect information assets; and ensures compliance with recordkeeping laws and regulations. To this last point, Joerling said records management is a key part of an organization’s commitment to risk mitigation.

“Liability lawsuits are often decided on the basis of old records,” Joerling explained. What’s more, the loss of records can have more devastating consequences than the loss of a plant, Joerling said, noting that some companies based in the World Trade Center during 9/11 went out of business because they didn’t have backup records.

So why don’t more top execs embrace records management?

For starters, most top execs don’t understand records management. “Records management is not mainstream yet,” he said. “It’s not taught in too many colleges or universities, so business managers coming out of school don’t understand it.” Many organizations also don’t have a records management professional. “Who’s going to be that champion in your company to go to senior management and say ‘We need to look into this because we could get in trouble by not doing it?’” Joerling asked.

Additionally, records and information management benefits can be difficult to quantify. With tight budgets as a result of the recession, this makes it more difficult to persuade senior management about records and information management.

Joerling offered tips for selling top execs on the need for records management:

1. Describe how records management will solve issues facing your organization.
2. Propose a recommended solution, whether it’s hiring a records manager or records management consultant.
3. Detail what will happen if a records management program is not undertaken.
4. Explain when the records management program will be deployed, and how much money, how much time and how many people will be needed for the program.
5. Keep the discussions at a high level and targeted to c-level core concerns, such as how the program ties into the company’s strategic plan.

“It’s an uphill battle because you’re dealing with something that a lot of executives don’t understand and don’t recognize why it needs to be done,” Joerling admitted. But with the growing importance of records and information management, it’s critical that document professionals convince top execs on the need for a program.

What do you think?

Consolidating patient records

By Mark Brousseau

As they move to electronic medical records (EMRs), one challenge for healthcare providers is how to consolidate electronic access to all of a patient’s documents.

Citizens Memorial Healthcare, which is made up of a hospital, 25 clinics, five long-term care facilities and a cancer center, has licked this problem by using ImageNow from Perceptive Software to tie together documents not captured in its Meditech 5.6 EMR system, including EKGs, radiology reports, outside lab results, wound and surgical photos and registration photos. This integration has allowed Citizens Memorial Healthcare to create a shared medical record across its enterprise.

In its EMR environment, regardless of visit, a patient’s documents are organized under a common number. To access documents related to an account that were not captured at the point-of-service by the EMR, the provider launches ImageNow in the background, allowing documents from either application to be displayed in the EMR system. To speed retrieval, ImageNow indexes documents in several categories; for instance, physicians can view patient diagnostics without having to look through registration documents. Documents also can be retrieved across accounts.

Electronic documents are created at the point-of-registration or via scanning later.

For primary care physicians that don’t have a way to get their EMR records into Citizens Memorial Healthcare’s system, ImageNow provides the ability to “scrape” data off of incoming faxes. As faxes come in to Citizens Memorial Healthcare, they are placed in a workflow queue where an employee triggers the technology.

“Our long-term goal is to have a true interface with Meditech for these documents. But we don’t have that in place now. ImageNow has provided that availability,” Tim Roberts, IS specialist, Citizens Memorial Healthcare, said yesterday during a presentation at Perceptive Software’s Inspire 2011 user conference in Las Vegas.

A Growing Opportunity for Banks in Healthcare?

Posted by Mark Brousseau

The banking industry has been an integral part of the healthcare world for decades, providing back-end financial administration services to health plans, ranging from processing premium payments and the financial part of the claims payments through medical lockbox services.

For banks, growing opportunities exist in the healthcare market, and revenue potential is apparent, according to Aite Group. To this end, banks are developing new products and services by applying business rules from existing products and services to cater to the healthcare space. With increased consumerism in the healthcare space since the beginning of the consumer-directed healthcare (CDH) movement, banks have been leaning on the core strengths and capabilities they have mastered in the retail environment in order to develop new product strategies, Aite Group says.

“Banks are in the unique position to be able to leverage their existing relationships with various stakeholders, including health plans, clearinghouses, healthcare providers, and healthcare vendors,” says Kunal Pandya, senior analyst with Aite Group. “Although banks’ overall focus in targeting the healthcare market is similar across the board, their approach to targeting specific areas varies widely based on their understanding of the space, relationships in the space, and overall corporate strategy.”

What do you think?

Growing Opportunity for Banks in Healthcare

Posted by Mark Brousseau

The opportunity for banks in the healthcare market is growing, Aaron McPherson, practice director, Payments and Security, Financial Insights, told attendees yesterday afternoon at the Healthcare Payments Automation Summit (HPAS) in Boston. “In the short run, healthcare reform hurt bank sales as providers were waiting to see what would happen. Now, patient payments, in particular, are an underdeveloped segment of the market that will become a key focus for banks,” McPherson said.

McPherson told attendees that several provisions of the healthcare reform legislation will provide a “big boost” to banks that are marketing payments processing services to healthcare providers:

… Greater operations complexity: Healthcare reform will create many more plans for healthcare providers to “deal with” -- each with different deductibles and co-pays.

… Electronic health records: The federal mandates for healthcare providers to implement electronic health records will sap limited resources for payments processing initiatives.

… Cost cutting: “Steep reductions in Medicare payments will force cost-cutting,” McPherson said, adding that this will drive some providers to partner with banks on payments processing.

… Higher patient payments volumes: “Healthcare reform will result in an increase in patient payment volumes, which, in turn, will stress the systems at many providers,” McPherson said.

But if banks are to take advantage of the growing opportunity in the healthcare market, McPherson said they should heed the lessons learned by their peers that were among the pioneers in the space.

Dedicated focus is critical: Three out of four banks that McPherson spoke with before the conference had a dedicated sales force for their healthcare remittance offerings.

Partners are important: “The banks I spoke with said their partners were critical to their success,” McPherson said. “Most banks will want to partner with a processor or specialty service provider. Experience and integration with clearinghouses, payers and such are important differentiators in the healthcare market. One bank bought their partner after a successful year-long collaboration. Another bank only found success in the healthcare space on their third partner.”

Prepare for sales challenges: “All of the banks I spoke with said the healthcare sales cycle was long and required significant subject matter expertise on the part of their salespeople,” McPherson said. “Banks can’t rely on their existing sales staff. They need people who understand the product and the market. Banks also should look for ways to leverage their existing relationships with providers.”

Patience and persistence do pay off: “The banks I spoke with have been at this for years,” he said.

New Survey -- Trends in Healthcare Payments Automation

Posted by Mark Brousseau

As an industry expert and healthcare provider, TAWPI and HIMSS’ Medical Banking Project would like to invite you to participate in a brief electronic survey designed to help healthcare organizations benchmark their payment operations.

The study will provide unbiased information to help healthcare organizations understand how their peers are using paper-based and electronic payments technologies and processes. Our objective is to help healthcare payments executives gain deeper insights about the adoption and effectiveness of these technologies and processes so they can make better informed strategic and tactical decisions.

Visit here to take the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FHLFDN6

Full results on the survey will be published later this summer. The survey includes about three dozen questions and takes about 10 minutes to complete.

Participant Benefits:
Survey participants will receive a complimentary copy of the study, as well as special access to a Webinar on the results of the survey. In addition, you can choose one of the following incentives:

A $25 American Express Gift Card

A more than 50% discount on a full registration to TAWPI's Healthcare Payments Automation Summit (HPAS), scheduled for September 19-21 in Boston (a $395 savings!)

The study’s insights on how other healthcare organizations are using paper-based and electronic payments technologies and processes will be worth the 10 minutes or so you will spend completing the survey.

Confidentiality:
Participation in this survey is voluntary and anonymous. No individual results or information about individual organizations will be reported or recorded; only group/industry results will be reported.

How to Participate:
Click here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FHLFDN6 to complete the survey. If you are not the correct person to fill out this survey please forward along to the proper person within your department.

You may complete the survey any time between now and August 1, 2010.

Your input means a great deal to us and we want to thank you for your time.

Using Bank Rails for Healthcare Payments

By Mark Brousseau

Banks can leverage their core competencies and existing infrastructure to more easily connect healthcare consumers, providers, and payers, Ralph Bernstein, senior vice president, healthcare strategy, US Bank, told attendees Monday at the Medical Banking Project Institute at HIMSS10 in Atlanta.

“There has to be a willingness to ride down the same set of tracks, and to create a cost model that works,” Bernstein told attendees. “But I absolutely think that we can do it. We already have the ability to take transactions out of your account in real-time; that’s the easy part. The hard part is when to move the money, and how much to take out. We need healthcare customers to tell us that.”

“As much money moves through the healthcare system, many more times that moves through the banking system around the world,” Bernstein noted.

“Banks need to participate,” said Ernie Clevenger, CEO, CareHere! “The banks can contribute to the process because ACH and EFTs are very simple transactions, and that concept needs to be forced.”

What do you think?

Streamlining Healthcare Payments

By Mark Brousseau

There’s no question that the healthcare payments system is inefficient – with the cost of those inefficiencies pegged at $35 billion a year – but any plans to reengineer the system cannot add new complexities, speakers at the Medical Banking Project Institute said at HIMSS10 on Monday in Atlanta.

“We’re locked in a paper morass. As quickly as possible, we need to liberate data so people can use it at the point of care,” John Casillas, executive director, Medical Banking Project, told attendees.

But Zahoor Elahi, vice president and general manager, Health and Financial Network, FIS Government, Education and Healthcare Solutions had a warning for industry stakeholders.“We’re all aware of the economy we’re in, and the spotlight on healthcare costs. As we move to creating the healthcare financial network of the future, it is important that all of the stakeholders are focused on brining value to it and taking costs out. They can’t be adding more variables and burden,” he said.

What do you think?

The ICD-10 Challenge

By Mark Brousseau

“ICD-10 is probably one of the biggest changes to occur in health IT in 30 years,” Dr. Joe Nichols, Edifecs medical director, told attendees at the Medical Banking Project Boot Camp this afternoon at HIMSS10 in Atlanta. “It is massive.”

ICD codes, which were developed for coding institutionally related procedures, are maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO). Most developed countries other than the United States use ICD-10, Nichols noted. The United States still uses ICD-9 codes. The international version of ICD-10 contains approximately 12,400 diagnostic codes. WHO approved the U.S. version of ICD-10, which contains approximately 69,000 codes.

As of October 1, 2013, all claims in the United States must use ICD-10.

Why is this so important? Because ICD-10 is a cornerstone of healthcare information, Nichols said. “It is the standard for defining the health state of the patient, and the institutional procedures that patients may receive to maintain or improve their health state,” he explained. “This is a big change in the coding system.” What was 14,300 codes under ICD-9 will rise to 69,000 codes under ICD-10, Nichols noted, with the number of procedure codes increasing from 3,800 to 72,000 under ICD-10.

With ICD codes pervasive throughout most health systems, and many business functions impacted by the codes, it is important that healthcare organizations have plan for supporting ICD-10 codes.

“ICD-10 codes are used for a lot of things,” Nichols said. As examples, he mentioned: actuarial and financial risk; adjudication; outcomes; population health analysis; benefits design; fraud, waste and abuse analysis; quality and efficiency assessment; medical policies and clinical guidelines; payment rules; clinical history; utilization; and regulatory reporting. “We based a lot of our national policies on this,” Nichols said. “The implications are far-reaching. Imperfect mapping from ICD-9 to ICD-10 will affect processing and analytics in a way that impacts revenue, costs, risk and relationships.”

So how do you deal with this?

“If you haven’t started now, you’re going to be behind the gun,” Nichols said. But organizations need to look at their short-term goals with a long-term vision, to determine what solutions they need today, and whether those solutions will meet future needs. Organizations also need to be aware of ICD-10’s touch points with other initiatives, and the potential downstream impacts of the change. And they should collaborate with business and trading partners as they develop their ICD-10 plans. Finally, organizations should use ICD-10 to try to position themselves for competitive advantage. “There are huge competitive advantages to using ICD-10 better than your competitors,” Nichols explained.

Start ARRA Awareness Training Now

By Mark Brousseau

If they haven’t done so already, companies in the healthcare space should conduct organizational awareness training on ARRA and HITECH, Mary Rita Hyland, AVP, regulatory affairs, The SSI Group, Inc., told attendees at the Medical Banking Project Boot Camp at HIMSS10 this afternoon.

Organizations also should conduct a HIPAA and HITECH gap analysis to identify any products, procedures and services that need to be updated and modified, Hyland told attendees. As part of this exercise, organizations need to identify and coordinate technical or product updates, as well as coordinate and implement policy and procedural updates. “Operationally, ensuring compliance with HITECH’s security and privacy provisions is, to a large degree, an IT function,” Hyland noted.

Once they’ve reviewed their systems, policies and procedures, organizations need to audit and assess their compliance. “You don’t want to wait for an audit to be done on you by a whistleblower or someone else in the industry who doesn’t believe you are in compliance,” Hyland warned. “Audits are going to be important in meeting the guidelines and maintaining your compliance.”

ARRA: A Whole New World

By Mark Brousseau

Last year was a year of transition for HIPAA, medical privacy and medical banking, Richard D. Marks of McLean, VA-based Patient Command, Inc. (www.patientcommand.com), told attendees this afternoon at the Medical Banking Project Boot Camp at the HIMSS10 conference in Atlanta.

“ARRA changes the rules for security of health information in the United States,” Marks said. “It creates an entirely new framework because it changes HIPAA so much and because it changes privacy in medical records. And, most significantly, it changes the whole approach to enforcement.”

“It’s fair to say that for the last decade, there has not been any real attempt on the part of the federal government to enforce HIPAA,” Marks explained. “ARRA changes that. What it brings into law, for the first time, is the hierarchy of diligence and culpability. There are increased, tiered civil and criminal monetary penalties, topping out at $50,000 per violation, with an annual limit of $1,500,000. These numbers are enough to get your attention. But the statute also includes civil and criminal liability for individuals, as well as organizations. Which individuals, you ask? Well, it could be you! And some people won’t figure this out, and you will see some prosecutions,” Marks predicted.

Integrated health information security is inherent in ARRA, Marks added.

References in business associate contracts now, by law, apply mutually to covered entities and business associates, Marks pointed out. “The impact of that is to rebalance all of the risk allocation that is in these agreements, and it creates a whole new set of possibilities for liabilities. Some folks will be less affected than others. But some of you will be affected will be enormously,” Marks said.

For instance, security is now an active responsibility of the board of directors and senior executives, if you are doing anything that touches healthcare, Marks said. “If you’re a public company you’ve really go to ask yourself how you do disclosure when you have to take on a much greater risk for your information systems,” Marks said. “What this all means is that you must have integrated, shared systems security that is comprehensive and fast, and upgraded from what you now have.”

Some of the changes in ARRA won’t go into effect until 2011. “But some of this is in effect now, because people, such as ambitious state attorneys general, are going to start enforcing HIPAA,” Marks said. “The bottom line is that ARRA makes it a whole new world in healthcare.”

Solving the Revenue Cycle

By Mark Brousseau

Banks are well positioned to help “solve” the healthcare revenue cycle, thanks to the keystone revenue cycle data that flows through banks every day, Benchmark Revenue Management CEO Tyson McDowell said at the Medical Banking Project Boot Camp in Atlanta this afternoon.

“Banks can solve operational improvement issues for hospitals, while solving transparency and risk management issues for themselves,” McDowell told attendees. He said banks should “grow-up” their healthcare revenue cycle solutions and extend into denial management, denial avoidance, and services that back up their healthcare customers’ revenue cycle workers with “on-demand” talent.

Today, many banks offer lockbox services, patient payment solutions and extended lockbox services.

“The revenue cycle improvement market is exploding due to permanent financial pressures,” noted McDowell. “While the official definition of the revenue cycle is all of the administrative processes related to collecting all fees owed for services to patients, a more practical definition would be: a near futile attempt to collect all the monies owed in a world with thousands of moving parts.”

“A hospital really has no idea how much money it’s going to get paid,” McDowell said. “Hospitals and, to a lesser extent individual doctors, are getting it from all sides. Healthcare providers need to protect themselves. And denial and payment data is the keystone for solving the revenue cycle.”

Banks have unique access to this information, McDowell said, and they offer value-added services like lockbox. “Banks are in a position to provide new services for healthcare. And it comes from the data. The hospital needs someone to tell them why they need to spend money on an improvement.”

McDowell concluded that banks are starting to move in the direction of new healthcare services.

The Economy and Medical Banking

By Mark Brousseau

With the current economic slowdown affecting virtually every individual and business today, the need to keep costs as low as possible has magnified some of the key trends that were already brewing in the medical banking services field prior to the downturn, says Maureen Turo (maureen.turo@bnymellon.com), vice president, Healthcare Market Specialist, The Bank of New York Mellon. These trends include revenue cycle improvements that provide a clear business case for saving time and money, and a partner with proven success in finding the right solutions.

There are numerous medical banking services available to help both payers (commercial insurers) and healthcare providers (institutional and professional). The most widely accepted services focus on improving the efficiency and amount of payments collected and posted by providers, Turo notes. Such services include automated EOB data lift, point of service systems, electronic processing and payment-to-contract analysis services.

"Healthcare providers are paying particular attention to those solutions that automate their payment processes for faster outstanding accounts receivables resolution," Turo says. "Automating payment processing frees resources (both staff and technology) to focus on other important payment collection tasks, such as resolving denied and under-paid claims."

Turo says an increasing number of healthcare providers are also looking for vendors to help them build and analyze the business case supporting these new services. "Although many medical banking services do not have any capital expenditure outlay, the services nonetheless require multiple levels of approval due to their impact on numerous back-office functions and financial systems," she explains. "Projects with the strongest business cases are the ones most likely to capture the provider’s attention."

In addition to needing a strong business case to implement these high-impact services, providers increasingly require strong references of potential vendors. They want to talk to other healthcare organizations that have implemented similar services to learn about the process and results, Turo says. Dealing with multiple (and sometimes antiquated) systems, as well as limited IT and project management resources, providers need assurance that a new service will address their most critical issues.

"Until more is known about the anticipated federal healthcare reform, I believe these trends will persist, with automation continuing to drive efficiencies in the healthcare industry," Turo says. "As providers experience success implementing various medical banking services, more will do so. Healthcare providers may not want to be on the leading edge of using these medical banking services, but they will not want to be left behind."

What do you think? Post your comments below.

Healthcare Spending Plans

Posted by Mark Brousseau

The tight credit markets are challenging healthcare providers' ability to access capital, according to the first survey in HFMA's Healthcare Financial Pulse project. More than 70 percent of all survey respondents forecast at least some cutbacks in such capital expenditures as IT systems, medical technology, and facilities construction.

Few Americans Using PHRs

Posted by Mark Brousseau

Consumer demand for accessing personal health records (PHR) online is now at more than 70 million Americans, according to Cybercitizen Health v8.0, the latest consumer study and strategic advisory service from pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research.

Despite significant interest in this type of service, only 7 million U.S. adults actually use PHRs.

Compelling offerings from vendors ranging from Google, WebMD, and Microsoft to multiple insurers and employers have sparked buzz around PHR in the past year. But for average consumers not motivated by a serious illness, significant barriers such as privacy concerns, lack of understanding, and doubts to PHR efficiency hinder adoption.

“Despite the rapidly increasing supply of PHR platforms, consumer adoption of PHRs is unlikely to show significant growth in the absence of major physician participation,” said Erika S. Fishman, Director of Research at Manhattan Research. "Education and awareness building will be critical in establishing the need for a PHR in the mind of American consumers. In a time when our country has not made health IT and electronic medical records a priority, it is understandable why consumers may not see the value in putting in the effort to keep a PHR on their own, unless they are highly motivated to do so because of an illness."

What do you think? Post your comments below.

The Credit Crisis and Medical Banking

By Mark Brousseau

How has the global credit crisis impacted the healthcare automation space?

“All companies are re-evaluating how much they can invest and where they can invest,” Paula Fryland, senior vice president and managing director, Corporate Banking, PNC Bank, said today at the Seventh National Medical Banking Summit in Nashville, TN. “At PNC Bank, we have made a conscious decision to identify a couple of investments in the space of innovation that we think are critical to the bank, and healthcare is one of those. We have a commitment to invest tens of millions of dollars in the healthcare space. There is no sense that there is any retreat from that investment.”

“There are no numbers coming out to suggest you should stop investing in healthcare,” she added.

Fyland told the crowd of 48 attendees that healthcare is a tremendous opportunity for financial institutions. “The potential was significant to begin with, it is growing, and healthcare is ripe with opportunity because it is very inefficient. If your bank has been ignoring healthcare, shame on you,” she said.

“There isn’t a company or institution that hasn’t been effected by the economic crisis over the past six months,” said Al Briand, division head, BNY Mellon Treasury Services, product management and strategic development. “Some of the organic volumes that drive business growth are not there. So what we need to do as an institution is become more diligent about preparing for the future and identifying those areas where the investment will pay off. We can’t count on the increases in revenues like we did in the past. Healthcare is firmly in our growth area and we continue to invest.”

What do you think? Post your comments below.

Banks See Healthcare Opportunity

By Mark Brousseau

Why do banks want to be at the table in the discussion about healthcare automation? Because it’s a good business to be in, Al Briand, division head, BNY Mellon Treasury Services, said today at the Seventh National Medical Banking Summit in Nashville, TN. “The reality is that it boils down to the business case being there for the healthcare transaction model,” Briand told attendees. “Now, we’re going to investigate whether we can play an even bigger role beyond transaction processing.”

Briand noted that BNY Mellon has deemed healthcare as a growth market from a business and strategy perspective. “The opportunity is there to invest,” he said, noting common elements of need underlie the traditional bank cash and payments business and that of healthcare transaction support. “The synergies of healthcare and treasury management element provide servicing efficiencies.”

Briand said standardization is the key to unlocking the power of technologies such as those for medical banking. “Standards allow technology to be leveraged in a very valuable way,” he said. “Standardization is really the key to accelerating the progress of medical banking and addressing the complexity in the healthcare and banking areas. A lot of different parties need to be involved.”

What do you think? Post your comments below.

Healthcare Privacy Concerns

By Mark Brousseau

Health IT and electronic health information exchange have tremendous potential to improve health care quality, reduce costs, and empower consumers, Deven McGraw, executive director, Health Privacy Project/Center for Democracy & Technology, said today during a presentation at the Seventh National Medical Banking Summit in Nashville, TN.

“The public wants health IT, but the public also has significant privacy concerns,” McGraw told attendees. “Failure to build a foundation of trust is an obstacle to achieving greater health IT adoption. For years, there was no progress on resolving the privacy and security issues related to health IT. But the recent stimulus plan bulldozes those obstacles.”

McGraw said the stimulus plan addresses health IT privacy and security issues in several ways:

… Substantive changes to HIPAA statutory provisions and privacy and security regulations
… Enhanced enforcement of HIPAA
… Provisions to address health information by some entities not covered by HIPAA

What do you think? Post your comments below.

The Stimulus Plan and Medical Banking

By Mark Brousseau

Will the stimulus plan, which includes $19 billion for health IT, bring more widespread adoption and interest in medical banking platforms? Charlie Myers, director of operations, special programs and support, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, based in Baltimore, MD, doesn’t think so.

“Unfortunately, when Washington talks about health information technology, they are talking about electronic medical records,” Myers said during a panel discussion at the Seventh National Medical Banking Summit in Nashville, TN. “Without some effort to go to Washington, D.C. and do some education on Capitol Hill, I don’t think a lot the stimulus plan dollars are going to come this way.”

Another panelist, Christine Smith, product manager-Remittance Solutions, WAUSAU Financial Systems, said, “While the stimulus package may not lead to more widespread adoption and interest in medical banking, I think that consumer-directed healthcare will. Physicians, particularly small ones, will need to become more competitive. And one of the big ways to reduce cost is to take some of the administrative cost out. That’s going to be the big driver of medical banking, not the stimulus plan.”

Laurie Holtsford, director of business office support, Community Healthcare Systems, Franklin, TN, said the stimulus plan could trigger partnerships between healthcare and banking organizations in that some providers may see medical banking as a way to meet rules and regulations without having to build out infrastructure: “I don’t see how providers can build this infrastructure themselves.”

What do you think? Post your comments below.

The Case for Medical Banking

By Mark Brousseau

The healthcare industry could eliminate some $30 to $50 billion a year in cost if it could find a more efficient way to process information, Robert Broadway, vice president, Bethesda Healthcare System in Boynton Beach, FL, said today during a presentation at the Seventh National Medical Banking Institute in Nashville, TN. And Broadway thinks medical banking is key to achieving these savings.

“Banks are in a unique position to help hospitals like us,” Broadway told the crowd of 100 attendees. “It is something that should happen. Will it happen? I believe that it will. Our institution is looking to the banking industry to see how we can partner on real tools to benefit for our mutual benefit.”

He added that, “the banking platform is universally accepted, it has earned great trust and confidence, and it has a strong emphasis on security.” What do you think? Post your comments below.

The CDH Paradigm Shift

By Mark Brousseau

The move to Consumer Directed Healthcare (CDH) plans is a game-changing event in medical banking, Stuart Hanson (stuart.hanson@53.com), vice president, Healthcare Solutions, Fifth Third Bank, said this afternoon during a presentation at the Seventh National Medical Banking Institute.

Hanson noted that CDH plans grew by 43 percent in 2008, with consumers spending an eye-popping $250 billion on out of pocket healthcare expenses (cash, check, credit, debit and automated clearing house). As a result of these trends, more than 20 percent of healthcare providers’ revenue will come directly from patients, Hanson said. Moreover, the impact of consumer-directed healthcare is only starting to be felt, and there is a building wave of demand behind it, he added.

“This turns the revenue collection model on its side,” Hanson said. “To manage this paradigm shift, and minimize the negative financial impact of CDH growth, processors will need new technologies, tools and processes. In a CDH world, providers must re-engineer their processes to more effectively capture, track and manage patient debt,” Hanson said, noting that most provides are challenged by outdated systems and limited electronic and paper connections for real-time reporting and processing.

Against this backdrop, Hanson believes that banks are well-positioned to help providers deal with the shift to CDH plans through retail lockbox, wholesale lockbox, and remote deposit capture services.

What do you think? Post your comments below.