The new electronic healthcare payment processing ecosystem

HERAE, one of the nation’s largest healthcare payment services providers, and Ohio State University Medical Center (OSU) have been invited to present a case study on how OSU successfully migrated to electronic payments at The Association for Work Progress Improvement (TAWPI) Healthcare Payments Automation Summit in Chicago on September 15.

The panel discussion entitled “The new electronic healthcare payment processing ecosystem – A case study featuring OSU and HERAE” will detail challenges paper-based payments processing presented for OSU and how it selected a solution, developed a business case, and realized benefits by moving to electronic payments and funds transfers.

Recent government healthcare reform policies and current economic conditions have created a sense of urgency for the healthcare industry to “go electronic” to improve the U.S. healthcare payments delivery system and establish standards for fraud and waste detection. HIPAA is also forcing banks and the healthcare industry to intersect like never before to move from paper to electronic remittance of payments. According to HERAE (pronounced “hurray”) healthcare payments represent the newest frontier in electronic payments.

“With more than $200 billion dollars in medical payments being paid by consumers every year and billions per day in electronic payments to healthcare providers by insurance companies there are real improvement opportunities for the entire healthcare payment ecosystem,” said HERAE CEO Jim Ribelin. “Healthcare providers can create significant savings, and banks and billing services can develop new revenue streams while saving the entire healthcare system billions. Recent events like the Minnesota E3 Initiative around healthcare remittance and payments are signs indicating the movement from paper to fully electronic solutions.”

OSU saw paper healthcare payments as a significant cost that had to be reduced in order to reach financial goals without impacting the high quality care OSU is known for.

Richard Sobieray, CFO of OSU Physicians, said, "For OSU, the ability to retain our existing bank relationships with Fifth Third and Chase, while having both banks establish connectivity to the HERAE solution, has been ideal for our organization in terms of migrating from paper claim payments to an electronic solution."