Gordon is Director of Healthcare Solutions at Systemware, Inc., where he is responsible for product strategy as well as product marketing. He has 20 years experience in delivering business solutions built on process management, workflow, integration and composite application approaches.
Gordon has written 17 article(s).
The focus at IFO Fusion, held this year at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, is still clearly on the world of accounts payable automation; but the audience at this year’s well-attended event also had interest in a number of other areas, including cloud-based solutions, outsourcing, and learning more about topics like medical banking and digital mail.
I presented to a good-sized audience on the topic of healthcare payments automation and reconciliation. The audience included representatives of a number of banks that are exploring adding this type of service to their existing lockbox offerings for their healthcare-provider customers.
There was a good exchange of ideas about the challenges of both constructing postable EDI 835 files as well as the need to focus on the reconciliation, through a single source, of both the paper EOB and EDI streams of remittances. The Department of Health and Human Services interim final rule related to the use of NACHA ACH transactions sets for integration of the payment data with the EDI remittance stream and the looming January 2014 deadline for compliance was also a heavily discussed item. [Read more…]
Digital mail is coming, and mailers know it. At Payments 2012 in Baltimore and CS Week in Grapevine, Texas, there was plenty of interest in the technology and plenty of questions, which I answered alongside our partners from industry leader Zumbox. Let’s take a quick look at three questions about digital mail that seemed to come up again and again.
1. How does digital mail work, and how is it different from email?
Digital mail is electronic home delivery. It places a user’s bills, statements, notices and other customer correspondence in an online mailbox. There they can be viewed, the bills paid and the letters, statements, bills, etc. stored without the user having to go to the website of each bank, utility and insurer with whom they deal. It’s different from email in that it’s a secure system that links known senders with known recipients. And while email tells you your statement is ready for viewing on a company website, digital mail delivers that statement. [Read more…]
Several upcoming events will give us an opportunity to talk about medical banking and Digital Mail Gateway, our new solution that enables corporations and print and mail providers to transform, package and deliver customer communications to consumers through digital mail providers.
Alan Beaney and I will be in Baltimore for Payments 2012, which runs from April 29 to May 2. More than 2,500 people are expected at Payments, where we’ll talk about digital mail alongside our partner Zumbox. Among the industry’s leading providers, Zumbox has created a digital mailbox for every street address in the country where an exact electronic copy of a paper item is delivered in a secure, central, online environment. [Read more…]
The National Postal Forum held last week in Orlando, Fla., served as a reminder that while the future of mail maybe digital, its present is firmly in print.
In outlining the United States Postal Service’s Plan to Profitability, its five-year business plan, the agency’s chief financial officer listed among its challenges what the Postal Service calls the “electronic diversion” of first-class mail. Its volume of first-class mail has declined 25 percent in just the last five years, and now is just 5 percent of total mail volume. Bills, invoices, financial statements and legal notices make up another 20 percent, and the remaining 75 percent is direct mail in one form or another. [Read more…]
Clarity. That seemed to be the watchword at the panel discussion on medical banking I hosted Monday at TEXPO 2012, the annual treasury management conference hosted by the Dallas Association for Financial Professionals.
Appearing with me were my Systemware colleague Andrea Chiappe and Laurie Masscurro from Bank of Oklahoma Financial. We had a tough act to follow — luncheon speaker Boone Pickens – but we managed to attract an audience of bankers and others interested in “Lessons Learned in Remittance Processing Implementations.”
All three of us talked about clarity, beginning with a bank’s overall goal. That’s to generate a file their customer can post, even though systems vary. Obviously, the cleaner (or clearer) banks can make the end result the better. And for clear communication, we talked about the importance of investing time in learning exactly what medical people are talking about. [Read more…]
The transformation of medical banking now well under way will only accelerate in the coming years with the implementation of the sweeping changes prescribed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Under the law, health plans must adopt electronic processing protocols by July 2013, and a series of other provisions will take effect through 2018. So it’s no surprise that HIMMS estimates the banking industry is investing more than $100 million a year in technologies to process claims and other transactions for providers of health services.
Banks clearly have recognized that the lock boxes that doctors and hospitals routinely use for process efficiency and risk mitigation can also help improve the flow of critical information and financial transactions. From their position in the direct path of the standard process — and with the appropriate technology solutions – banks see they can move from mere cash management into healthcare transaction processing. HIMSS goes as far as to suggest that banks can adapt their online and mobile banking platforms to also accommodate the transfer of patients’ electronic medical records from one health care provider to another. [Read more…]
The focus at IFO Fusion, held this year at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, is still clearly on the world of accounts payable automation; but the audience at this year’s well-attended event also had interest in a number of other areas, including cloud-based solutions, outsourcing, and learning more about topics like medical banking and digital mail.