The Power of Print Meets the Power of Online

Get the best of both worlds with Emdeon Patient Connect
The American consumer's growing trust of online bill payment and banking may mean that providers and hospitals can benefit greatly from giving their patients electronic payment options, but the importance of clear and concise paper statements cannot be underestimated. The use of multiple vendors for these needs can make the coordination of both processes a difficult task that eventually reduces the benefits that make online billing and payment valuable in the first place.

That's where Emdeon Patient Connect can help. The key to a successful plan is to utilize solutions across the entire patient billing and payment process that work together and share information to eliminate delays and encourage faster payments. Emdeon Patient Connect combines powerful online and paper billing options that work together to keep your patients informed of their responsibilities while facilitating increased self-pay collections and reduced administrative costs.

Emdeon ExpressBill Services delivers intelligent paper statements
As part of the Emdeon Patient Connect suite, Emdeon ExpressBill Services provides clear, concise patient statements that leverage your existing financial data. Emdeon ExpressBill Services encompasses the guidelines of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) PATIENT FRIENDLY BILLING® initiative and focuses on improving the quality of patient statements. Easy-to-read bills and statements educate patients on their financial responsibilities which can result in higher payment rates and fewer customer service calls.

Emdeon ExpressBill Services’ statements and invoices are designed to cut processing costs by shortening the time it takes to get a statement from you to your customer. Emdeon provides the very best in state-of-the-art bill printing so you can bypass conventional, time consuming folding, stuffing and stamping statements. Conveniently, Emdeon allows you to transmit billing information electronically to one of our process, print and mail centers.

Emdeon Patient Pay Online delivers comprehensive electronic billing and payment
Also part of the Emdeon Patient Connect suite of services, Emdeon Patient Pay Online provides comprehensive and secure online billing and payment management. Emdeon Patient Pay Online can yield faster collection of patient-owed amounts, improved cash flow and reduced billing costs with less effort and paperwork. Patient billing will be current, accurate and accessible, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

With Emdeon Patient Pay Online, patients receive email updates linking them to a secure section of their provider’s existing website where they can easily view, manage and pay their accounts online. Patients gain direct access to their account information allowing them to manage account preferences, update demographic information, email customer service staff with billing inquiries and access FAQs and other helpful information. By bringing billing and payment convenience to patients online, providers can reduce support calls, increase billing data accuracy, reduce A/R days and lower collection costs.

One partnership for better patient billing and payment
Our paper and online solutions for patient billing and payment are just the beginning of how we can help you save time and money every day. With Emdeon Patient Connect you get one integrated solution that covers your entire patient billing and payment cycle. With the improved clarity and accuracy of patient communications we can offer, many providers benefit from an increase in self-pay revenue and operational efficiencies. Let us show you how efficient and effective patient billing and payment can be!

To discover more about how we’re Simplifying the Business of Healthcare, contact us today at 877.EMDEON.6 (877.363.3666) or visit us online at www.emdeon.com/pbps.

Simplify Patient Registration

Emdeon makes it easy
We are proud to announce that AccuReg®, an industry-leading registration accuracy program, can now be integrated with Emdeon Assistant! What does this mean for you? It means the industry’s best patient access management tool can now provide even higher clean claim rates, fewer denials, less rework and quicker reimbursements.

Improve your registration process
With the integration of Emdeon Assistant and AccuReg, you get a report comparing actual values from insurance responses with data in your HIS. Discrepancies remaining after your registrars have made decisions about which Emdeon demographic details to post and which to ignore, will be called out for additional review. This enables you to establish periodic review processes for identifying and correcting variances. Combining the insurance verification, address correction or patient payment predictability of Emdeon Assistant with the retrospective auditing of AccuReg is a powerful way to catch transposition errors in social security numbers, policy numbers, date-of-birth and more! We can even verify the spelling of names. All of this can result in less complicated

Fast, easy patient registration
The power of AccuReg integrated with Emdeon Assistant can make your patient registration almost effortless. Assistant provides you the ability to quickly access and verify information such as patient eligibility, address and other vital information through real-time EDI transactions. Smart Search™ technology and custom designed automation also help you work more productively to save time and money. Once fully integrated with your registration process, automatically initiated searches reveal the true power of Emdeon Assistant. For example: insurance eligibility can be automatically identified in real-time during patient registration using demographic information just entered or previously stored within the system. Returned eligibility and benefit information can then be posted directly into the appropriate fields within the insurance segment of the patient’s account. If the provider’s registration system recipient number differs from the one returned from the carrier, it can be flagged and automatically updated in the insurance screens.

Start simplifying your healthcare business today!
We are ready to start improving your patient registration with intelligent, real-time transactions that fit the way you work. The addition of AccuReg to Emdeon Assistant is just one example of our commitment to providing the most advanced and effective solutions available.

To learn more about how Emdeon and Emdeon Assistant can help your healthcare organization, call us today at 877.EMDEON.6 (877.363.3666) or visit online at www.emdeon.com/pbps.

Return to Sender

Reduce your undeliverable and returned mail
Did you know that according to the United States Postal Service, 17% of Americans change addresses annually? Whether it's for business, family or personal reasons, as a society we are on the move and changing mailing addresses more often than ever before. The unfortunate side effect of this is that more and more pieces of important mail are being classified as undeliverable and returned to the sender because of outdated addresses. For providers, this can mean a painful increase in bad-debt and self-pay cases where no new address is available.

Collection agencies can sometimes help recover the otherwise lost revenue by utilizing highly complex skip tracing methods to find the person, but the added overhead can greatly reduce any potential benefits. Additionally, returned mail can create a time-consuming task for your staff which takes them away from focusing on patients and delivering the best care possible.

Eliminate returned mail handling
Emdeon Return Mail Manager can eliminate 100% of your returned mail handling and help find up-to-date addresses for most mail marked undeliverable. Instead of mail being returned to you, it is sent directly to our facility for analysis and to initiate skip tracing. Once we find the up-to-date information for that person we can automatically remail the documents. After remailing, we then provide you with a detailed report of the status of each account, including a custom file format available for forwarding directly to your revenue recovery partners.

With the power of Emdeon Return Mail Manager you can make sure that more of your statements and communications are delivered, which can lead to collecting more self-pay revenue quickly and efficiently. Your staff can also save time by not having to deal with time-consuming and frustrating return mail related tasks. So the next time you see a stack of returned mail or go over those painful self-pay losses, remember that Emdeon Return Mail Manager is the affordable and efficient way to make sure you connect with the most patients possible.

To discover more about how we’re Simplifying the Business of Healthcare, contact us today at 877.EMDEON.6 (877.363.3666) or visit us online at www.emdeon.com/pbps.

A New Healthcare Model?

A closer look at universal healthcare

While many Americans understand the basic economics of our existing healthcare system, healthcare reform is front-and-center in the 2008 election cycle. One of the most discussed and dramatic changes being proposed is universal healthcare. Once viewed as impossible, universal healthcare now seems more possible than ever. Consider that Massachusetts, California, Maine, Vermont and Hawaii have created, or are currently considering implementing, universal or near-universal systems.

While many Americans understand the market-based model, universal healthcare is a very nebulous and undefined idea in the American political discussion. This leaves many of us asking: What is universal healthcare and what does it mean for the modern healthcare industry?

Coverage for all citizens

Whether one calls it universal healthcare or universal coverage, the goal is the same: to extend healthcare coverage to every citizen by either private insurance or government programs. Beyond that common goal, proponents often vary greatly on how to achieve it.

Understanding the differences between the primary methods of implementation around the world is the key to assessing what effect any such healthcare reform will have on patients, providers and payers in the US.

What are the most common forms of universal healthcare?

Compulsory Insurance: Currently used in Massachusetts, Germany and Belgium

The compulsory insurance model uses legislation to require every citizen to purchase affordable health insurance. A government oversight board creates the definition of affordable after negotiating with pharmaceutical and insurance companies to mediate their potential liability. In the Massachusetts model, which took effect in 2006, citizens who do not qualify for poverty/low-income assistance must buy insurance or face yearly fines assessed on their income tax. Legislation also expands coverage for the poor and penalizes employers who do not offer healthcare coverage.

Taxation: Currently used in England, Australia and India

Taxation is a very different way to achieve universal healthcare. In this model, which has been used in England since the end of World War II, insurance is almost entirely eliminated and the healthcare system is regulated by the government and funded from the public tax pool. Hospitals and high-level healthcare infrastructure are overseen by government agencies, while doctors and staff are a mixture of private and government employees. Some countries have also used the taxation model, but left direct control up to state or provincial governments.

Combined: Currently used in Canada, Singapore and the Netherlands

Several countries have taken this dual-level approach to universal healthcare wherein primary care is directly funded by tax dollars collect from the general public. Private insurance companies still exist to offer supplemental coverage for extra services like dental, vision, elective procedures, extended hospital stay, upgraded facilities for hospital stays and other services deemed outside of primary care. Often, such as in Canada, almost all hospitals are publicly managed. The amount of public and private mixture varies between each version implemented by a nation or state.

The reforms to the healthcare industry discussed during this election cycle are sure to be as complex and difficult as the problems facing our industry in general. Whether any politician in America rallies enough public and political support to implement a universal healthcare system, there is an undeniable urge on all sides to change the business of healthcare for the better. Everyone agrees that increasing efficiency, reducing costs and improving overall care are of vital importance to any plan, but how we achieve those goals, it appears, will remain open to debate.

Living Ahead of the Curve

The future of online patient billing and payment

Recently, Emdeon Executive Vice President of Provider Services Philip Hardin sat down with the respected journal Future Healthcare to discuss the present and the future of online patient billing and payment and what it will mean for providers. Below is an excerpt from this conversation and the URL where you can listen to the podcast of the entire conversation:

Future Healthcare: Online billing and payment is gaining acceptance and momentum in most markets, with 74 percent of consumers paying at least one bill per month online. Given this growth in the retail sector, what are some reasons why healthcare has been slow to adopt online patient billing and payment?

Philip Hardin: The healthcare industry has unique challenges that have slowed the adoption of online patient billing and payment. Due to the nonrecurring nature of healthcare billing, providers are skeptical about the need for online billing and payment methods and are concerned that patients may not utilize these methods. Additionally, more in healthcare than in any other industry, security concerns associated with online billing and payment are paramount. HIPAA requirements established by the federal government mandate the protection of protected health information (PHI), forcing healthcare to more carefully consider the implications of placing patient information on the Internet.

There is also the perception in healthcare that online billing and payment systems are expensive to implement and time-consuming to manage. However, the application service provider (ASP) technology to enable these capabilities is available with modest IT and capital investments. Initially, healthcare providers and payers must make some necessary workflow changes to facilitate online patient billing and payment. Some of these workflow changes may be as simple as creating a method to capture and store necessary patient communication data such as e-mail addresses. To be consistent with other retail-oriented industries, there are some long-term workflow changes that are necessary to give consumers visibility into primary insurance payments, contractual discounts and coordination of benefits on a timely basis.

Which healthcare trends will impact provider adoption of online patient billing and payment solutions?

As consumer-directed health plans (CDHP) increase in popularity, a greater percentage of healthcare costs will be transferred to the patient. In response to this, providers will need new methods – both paper and electronic – to communicate financial responsibility to patients. In addition, as the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) PATIENT FRIENDLY BILLING® initiative gains visibility, more providers will be encouraged to develop a technology strategy for improved patient financial communication, including online billing and payment capabilities.

Another healthcare trend that will impact the adoption of online billing and payment solutions is the rising cost of collections that providers are experiencing. Costs associated with in-house billing and payment activities such as printing and mailing statements, returned mail management and storage, retrieval and archival of paper information have been steadily increasing, forcing providers to look for ways to reduce costs. As a result, online billing and payment solutions are more likely to be considered since they enable providers to reduce or eliminate the paper-based billing and payment activities and the associated costs.

What factors should providers consider when looking for an online billing and payment solution?

Any online billing and payment solution being considered should encompass healthcare billing compliance requirements and standards, including HIPAA requirements, to protect PHI. Technology deployment is also important as providers typically have limited IT resources. The ideal online billing and payment solution should require few provider IT resources to implement or maintain. The best solutions are integrated with the providers’ patient statement printing and mailing process. This prevents a second system implementation, minimizes ongoing maintenance costs and eliminates synchronization issues that would confuse the patient.

The ability to integrate with existing patient billing processes is also important when evaluating an online solution. For instance, understanding existing credit card processor agreements and whether or not these will need to change with a new online billing and payment solution is critical. Furthermore, an integrated solution will also enable comprehensive visibility of all payment activity across multiple facilities and should eliminate the need for manual keying of payment information through automated payment posting to the patient’s record.

Another important factor that providers should consider when selecting an online billing and payment solution is the ability to accept a wide variety of payment types such as credit cards, check cards and eCheck/automated clearing house (ACH) payments. The more flexible the payment options are, the more likely that patients will pay.

To hear a convenient podcast of the entire conversation between Phillip Hardin and Future Healthcare, be sure to visit us at http://www.emdeon.com/ProviderSolutions/patient-pay-online/index.php.

Stay Connected with Your Patients through Informative Statement Inserts

Take full advantage of your patient communications

Looking for an economical and easy way to improve the connection with your patients? Our patient statement inserts are a personal, effective and economical method to keep in touch. In most cases, no additional postage is required because the inserts are included with documents that are already going to the patients. Simply contact Emdeon with the details you want to communicate and we can create a custom insert just for you or you may choose from any of our existing stock inserts and we’ll customize it with your logo.

What are some ways inserts can help you connect?

• Promotion of National Health Awareness Observances
• Education on Important Health Topics
• Change of Address Notices
• Changes in the Billing Cycle
• Promotion of a New Product or Service

Any message you need to communicate to your patients can be executed effectively and economically with a timely statement insert. To learn more or to add an insert to your next round of statements, call 800.537.7563, ext. 43063.

Q&A Call-out

I have a different idea for an insert. Can Emdeon Business Services help me design an insert to my specification?

Yes, we can. We will work with you to customize an insert to meet your needs.

I need an insert designed and sent in a short timeframe. How much time do you normally require for the completion of the insert process?

We usually require 5 to 7 business days for a standard insert to be designed, approved and printed.

Can we add our company logo to the insert?

Absolutely. Inserts can be customized to meet your needs.

How are inserts priced?

Pricing for inserts is based on volume and customization.