Health care providers lose millions of dollars and countless administrative hours each year to claims processing which essentially lowers net reimbursement amounts. Sounds crazy, right? Well, if a practice accepts old-fashioned checks or insurer credit cards, a large portion of those claim dollars is spent on administrative and transaction fees.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, “an April 2010 study in the journal Health Affairs found that physicians spend nearly 12 percent of every dollar they receive from patients to cover the costs of filling out forms and performing other excessively complex administrative tasks.”
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Fortunately, a new HIPAA regulation took effect on January 1, 2014 which establishes a new standard for electronic funds transfer and promises to cut costs and red-tape for health care providers. Now, all health care plans must pay using lower cost Automated Clearing House (ACH) electronic funds transfer if a provider requests it.
Accepting ACH payments is safe and easy; all that’s needed is a bank account. It works like a direct deposit paycheck – the funds are transferred directly between banks and post automatically. No more processing paper checks and, at about $0.34 per transaction, it’s significantly cheaper than insurer credit cards. And, unlike insurer credit cards, an ACH payment is assigned a trace number which automatically links it to a Remittance Advice notice, making it HIPAA ERA compliant.
With lower costs and less red-tape, the future of claims payment processing just got a little easier!
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