Companion
Direct Point of Care System Helps Doctors Collect Payment Quickly
With
more and more consumers participating in high-deductible health
plans, health savings accounts, and other forms of consumer-directed
health plans, physicians and laboratories have to collect substantially
more money from their patients. Collecting from patients while
they are still in the physician’s office is the ideal situation,
but must patients don’t know what their copayment, deductible,
or out-of-pocket is for any given service. In many cases, that
means that the physician must bill the insurer, wait weeks for
a settlement, and then bill the patient for the balance. Patients
are somewhat unlikely to pay a bill for services rendered in the
distant past.
To help with the problem of in-office collection, Companion
Technologies has created a card reader that accepts patients’
credit, debit, or insurance cards called Companion
Direct POC. These small machines feature a keypad, a screen,
and a printer that prints a patient receipt. The process works
in 4 quick steps:
1. Run healthcare card through Companion Direct POC healthcare
card reader and enter patient-specific information
2. Patient information sent to appropriate payer
3. Plan information and eligibility sent back in seconds
4. Print receipt and eligibility information directly from card
reader
The systems are inexpensive, running about $20 per month plus
a 20-cent per transaction fee. For this nominal fee, doctors can
insure that a patient knows what s/he owes before s/he leaves
the office.
On January 9, 2007, Companion Technologies was purchased from
BlueCross
BlueShield of South Carolina and sold to The Thurston Group
and ABRY Partners. Now that
Companion Technologies has more financing than BlueCross BlueShield
of South Carolina was able to provide this small part of its operations,
Dark Daily predicts that Companion Technologies will expand its
promotion and implementation of real-time eligibility verification
systems across the country at a rapid pace.
Laboratories can expect to be effected in a number of ways by
the spread of real-time eligibility verification and real-time
claims settlement. First, patients will become accustomed to eligibility
verification/claims settlement services from physicians offices
and will expect to see them in laboratories, as well. This means
laboratories must be prepared to deal with patients on a cash
basis, accepting cash, credit cards, and health debit cards. Second,
laboratories and pathology groups should enjoy a better collection
ratio for patient-billed services because of the real-time billing.
Aspiring laboratories will make proactive responses to this trend
and see it as an opportunity to create a competitive advantage,
keep existing clients, and grab more market share.
Related Articles:
Thurston Group and ABRY Partners Purchase Companion Technologies
Corporation
Payers
Begin Speeding Up Payment to Physicians The Dark Report, November
2005
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