Study on Healthcare Payments Processing Re-Enforces EOB Opportunity

The study was commissioned by Orbograph and conducted by BroadTrust.

Great quote from VP of Marketing Joe Gregory in press release that came out today: “There appears to be a paradox in the industry. One half of the respondents were still processing 25% paper and the overall electronic payment penetration is estimated to be near 60%. Meanwhile, satisfaction levels toward EDI adoption with hospital revenue cycle managers are 91%! There is a clear disconnect between expectations of industry influencers and actual achievements.”

If you remember, I came away from the recent IOFM Payments Summit with a feeling that there is a big opportunity in capturing paper EOBs when combined with the right additional processes - mainly in the area of payment processing. I think the results of this study re-enforce that view.

Great ideas that transform paper-burdened operations to fully automated platforms need greater visibility,” - See more at: http://www.orbograph.com/orbograph-underwrites-2014-strategic-healthcare-payments-research-initiative.htm#sthash.0EOnFcrI.dpuf

"Great ideas that transform paper-burdened operations to fully automated platforms need greater visibility,” said John Casillas, CEO of BoardTrust.

"The data affirms that there is still a lot of untapped value in transforming revenue cycle operations from paper-based to digital processing. Our action item from this survey is to develop additional educational programs on the benefits of electronification and methods to achieve straight-through-processing of payments and remittances," added Barry Cohen, co-president of Orbograph.

The 2014 Strategic Healthcare Payments Research Initiative is available on the Orbograph website, and can be downloaded at www.orbograph.com/ 2014-strategic-healthcare-payments-research-initiative.htm. - See more at: http://www.orbograph.com/orbograph-underwrites-2014-strategic-healthcare-payments-research-initiative.htm#sthash.0EOnFcrI.dpuf

The 2014 Strategic Healthcare Payments Research Initiative is available on the Orbograph website.

When leaders of organizations are willing to throw

“there appears to be a paradox in the industry. One half of the respondents were still processing 25% paper and the overall electronic payment penetration is estimated to be near 60%. Meanwhile, satisfaction levels toward EDI adoption with hospital revenue cycle managers are 91%! There is a clear disconnect between expectations of industry influencers and actual achievements.” - See more at: http://www.orbograph.com/orbograph-underwrites-2014-strategic-healthcare-payments-research-initiative.htm#sthash.0EOnFcrI.dpuf

“there appears to be a paradox in the industry. One half of the respondents were still processing 25% paper and the overall electronic payment penetration is estimated to be near 60%. Meanwhile, satisfaction levels toward EDI adoption with hospital revenue cycle managers are 91%! There is a clear disconnect between expectations of industry influencers and actual achievements.” - See more at: http://www.orbograph.com/orbograph-underwrites-2014-strategic-healthcare-payments-research-initiative.htm#sthash.0EOnFcrI.dpuf

“there appears to be a paradox in the industry. One half of the respondents were still processing 25% paper and the overall electronic payment penetration is estimated to be near 60%. Meanwhile, satisfaction levels toward EDI adoption with hospital revenue cycle managers are 91%! There is a clear disconnect between expectations of industry influencers and actual achievements.” - See more at: http://www.orbograph.com/orbograph-underwrites-2014-strategic-healthcare-payments-research-initiative.htm#sthash.0EOnFcrI.dpuf

“there appears to be a paradox in the industry. One half of the respondents were still processing 25% paper and the overall electronic payment penetration is estimated to be near 60%. Meanwhile, satisfaction levels toward EDI adoption with hospital revenue cycle managers are 91%! There is a clear disconnect between expectations of industry influencers and actual achievements.” - See more at: http://www.orbograph.com/orbograph-underwrites-2014-strategic-healthcare-payments-research-initiative.htm#sthash.0EOnFcrI.dpuf

Cool Stitching Feature in Kodak Alaris-HTI EOB Offering

Yesterday, Kodak Alaris announced it has teamed up with HTI Healthcare to offer an explanation of benefit (EOB) solution. The solution basically involves healthcare providers and third-party bill payers utilizing Kodak scanners and Capture Pro Software to feed HTI's system--which is a cloud-based EOB processing service. HTI then returns relevant extracted data to the providers and billers, along with - get this - "fully indexed patient claim 'stitched' images—a single image showing only the needed patient claim record, including all required EOB header information to identify the payer. Stitched images are a vast improvement over the outdated redaction process that left large gaps in the content of the document." We thought that was pretty cool. Bottom line is that it's good to see continued improvements in the evolving paper EOB processing market. 

Orbograph Launches Cloud-Based EOB Service

Recognition technology specialist Orbograph has launched a cloud-based service for capturing data from Explanation of Benefit (EOB) forms in the healthcare industry. Orbograph, which has its sales and marketing operations based in Billerica, MA, has long been a leader in the check capture space. It recent years, it has looked to move into the document imaging market, leveraging its Key-Pay Convene platform, which basically applies Orbograph's automatic recognition technology to capture as much data from forms as possible, and then uses a fleet of keyers to enter any data that couldn't be recognized with a high enough confidence rate. We're assuming the same type of concept is being utilized in the new P2Post™(paper-to-post) Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) solution.

P2Post has been implemented at a "major US pharmacy provider." According to the press release, "Orbograph P2Post can provide savings of 40-60% compared to the manual entry of EOB Service Line information, which can approach 40-50 cents per service line. The Orbograph P2Post solution was also benchmarked during the proof of concept process with near zero defects or errors on the EOB data originating from documents with single service lines to as many as 900. This accuracy level is up to 10 times superior to manual processes."


EOB's have long been an area of focus in the document capture market, and lately we've been seeing more signs, like this announcement) that our industry is finally making some progress in this area.

Healthcare Information Exchanges Create Capture Opportunities

If you didn't see it, a couple weeks ago in the premium edition of DIR, I ran a summary of a presentation given by Dr. Craig Jones, Vemont's executive director for its Blueprint for Health initiative. He discussed his state's plan to create an electronic exchange for patient information that receives information from EMR systems. This was an idea first introduced to us as last year's TAWPI-Fusion show by Accenture's Chris Deelsnyder. And, it seems to be catching on, as today Maryland announced such an exchange center is shaping up in its state as well.

According to Dr. Jones, the opportunity and challenge for capture vendors regarding around these "exchanges" is being abel to ensure that needed information is captured off the patient records - which he says is a big hurdle at the current point in time, because EMR systems are generally very not good at this.

Industry veteran's take on iTablet

Datacap founder Scott Blau introduced forms processing technology that last time Apple introduced a revolutionary tablet computer. Remember the Newton? This got me thinking about the EMR world, where doctor's are attempting to go paperless to get their share of the stimulus package. EMR applications are often connected to tablet computers.

A had a conversation with Hyland Software's healthcare manager who explained how document imaging can contribute to providers meeting "meaningful use" requirements and earning reimbursement. Basically, her view was that about 30% of medical records like EKG and lab reports, faxes from other offices, etc. comes in on paper and needs to be captured. Thus imaging technology is necessary to ensure full utilization of an EMR system, which contributes to meeting "meaningful use" requirements. 

Electronic Medical Records

There sure has been a lot of buzz on this topic since the stimulus package with passed promising like $30 billion for doctors to move to electronic healthcare records. Here's a chat that showed up on Yahoo Finance with the CEO Aethena. Fairly brief. Fairly interesting.