PHILADELPHIA, PA and NEWPORT BEACH, CA (March 11, 2009) – InstaMed pledged its support today for the Medical Group Management Association’s (MGMA) Project SwipeIT. This industry-wide initiative is intended to build coalescence among insurers, vendors and providers in order to drive the creation and adoption of standardized, machine readable patient ID cards by January 1, 2010. MGMA currently estimates that broad use of such technology would result in combined annual savings of one billion dollars for physician groups and hospitals.
InstaMed also re-affirmed its commitment to improving the way patients, providers and payers communicate by virtue of its patent pending technology and platform, which powers the company’s end-to-end approach to patient ID automation. InstaMed’s approach to automated patient verification ranges from its point of service swipe capabilities for providers, to its card issuance solutions for payers. InstaMed is uniquely positioned as an integrated, real-time healthcare clearinghouse and payment processor and also as an issuer of machine readable cards and automation solutions for payers.
William F. Jessee, MD, FACMPE, President and CEO of MGMA stated, “We welcome InstaMed to this important industry initiative that includes UnitedHealth Group, Humana, Availity and Emdeon. InstaMed has demonstrated innovation and early market leadership for patient ID swipe capabilities both with payers, providers and the payment networks. We are excited to have InstaMed join this rapidly growing industry initiative.”
In 2006, InstaMed launched its Automated Eligibility solution, which included the ability for providers to use the InstaMed Smart Reader – which plugs into any laptop or desktop – in order to swipe health insurance cards, launch real-time eligibility transactions, and view results on the InstaMed Online web-based platform. This same Smart Reader is compatible with InstaMed Payment Transactions, enabling providers to collect patient payments in the Front Office, Back Office and via a web-based portal. Since then, demand for these solutions has continued to increase and the industry is poised to welcome wide-spread deployment of machine readable patient ID cards and the resulting benefits from increased automation and fewer phone calls.
Chris Seib, Chief Technology Officer of InstaMed stated, “We applaud MGMA’s efforts to foster industry-wide adoption of swipe based healthcare ID cards. InstaMed will continue to support all known healthcare ID card formats, while also enabling health plans to issue compatible ID cards.”