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nTelagent's Self-Pay Management System Offers Global Healthcare Providers Price Transparency and Package Pricing to Attract Medical Tourists

Posted on: Thursday, 31 January 2008, 09:00 CST

nTelagent, Inc. today reports that its proprietary front-end business solution, the Self-Pay Management System, offers a one-stop solution for healthcare providers in the United States and worldwide participating in the medical tourism market. nTelagent, a Nashville, Tenn.-based company, enables healthcare service providers to revolutionize the way they interact with self-pay patients regarding patient responsibilities pre-registration and at the point of service. "Self-pay" is the portion of the medical bill for which the patient is responsible. This includes co-pays and deductibles for patients with traditional health insurance and the full medical bill for uninsured patients or those paying out-of-pocket, such as medical tourists.

Globalization is affecting the healthcare industry in a dramatic manner. Medical tourism, the rapidly growing practice of going to another country to obtain healthcare, is becoming a popular healthcare service delivery option, due to the cost savings and lure of exotic locations.

For more information about the growing practice of medical tourism, download the White Paper "Using Self-Pay Management Systems to Manage and Promote the Growing Practice of Medical Tourism" at www.ntelagent.com.

According to Earl T. Winter, Chairman and CEO of nTelagent, "With this growing trend toward global care, healthcare providers must be able to offer price transparency in order to stay competitive, as patients 'comparison shop' among different providers, and across different countries." Opportunities abound for the United States to position itself as a popular medical tourism destination. But the United States is behind in seeking to become a destination for those in other parts of the world, largely due to U.S. dependency on health insurance payors and lack of price transparency.

"U.S. healthcare providers are missing out on a big opportunity in terms of medical tourism," says Winter. "Most healthcare services providers in the United States are simply not equipped to accept medical tourists from a pricing and billing point of view. They just don't have the systems in place to deal with self-pay patients."

With implementation of nTelagent's Self-Pay Management System (SPMS), however, healthcare providers in the United States, as well as worldwide, are able to offer services to medical tourists and other self-pay patients in a comprehensive, streamlined manner. Specifically, the system improves a healthcare provider's revenue cycle process for those patients, such as medical tourists, who must pay all or a portion of the medical bill pre-registration or at the point of service. The system can provide price transparency, price negotiation and discounting, package pricing, and front-end collections.

For healthcare providers looking to cater to medical tourists, the SPMS will:

Provide price transparency for buyers seeking to pay cash for services

Offer flexible payment options and medical banking, which increases collections and allows a patient to budget for care

Create discount policies that improve access and generate collections

Allow registrars and financial counselors at the healthcare facility to offer reasonable terms

Determine co-pays and deductibles for those with insurance coverage

Screen for benefit qualifications and determine co-pays and deductibles if eligible for government benefits--domestic or foreign

Drive consistent policies by procedure and service type

About nTelagent, Inc.

nTelagent, a Nashville, Tenn.-based company, enables healthcare service providers to revolutionize the way they interact with patients regarding patient responsibilities at the point of service, including offering price transparency and medical financing options. The company's Self-Pay Management System increases upfront cash and overall collections by providing registrars and financial counselors with interactive scripts that integrate patient demographic information with each provider's unique business policies and rules. The system automatically identifies discounting and charity care options when applicable, and helps to ensure that patient financial accounting--for both insured and uninsured patients--is handled appropriately and in a non-discriminatory manner. For healthcare providers, nTelagent's system improves upfront and overall cash flow, receivables and profitability by reducing bad debt and improving the revenue cycle process for patients who must pay a portion of the bill through payment requirements, such as co-pays, co-insurance and deductibles. Visit nTelagent online at www.ntelagent.com to learn more.

Source: Business Wire

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