Wachovia Introduces PatientPOS

"This solution addresses the key challenges associated with payments collection that frustrate many healthcare providers today," said Chris Ward, senior vice president and head of Wachovia's Treasury Services Payables and Receivables solutions. "We are committed to meeting the unique needs of our healthcare clients. The integration of PatientPOS(sm) into Wachovia's suite of healthcare-specific treasury capabilities enables us to better support these clients in strategically managing patient payments and improving revenue cycle management."

PatientPOS(sm) is an enterprise payment solution that facilitates convenient up-front point-of-sale (POS) patient payment collection. It enables payment plan management and integrates these activities with patient accounting and general ledger processes. The solution can increase revenues, decrease bad debt, reduce collection costs and improve staff productivity.

PatientPOS is Wachovia's most recent addition to its healthcare product suite - which focuses both sales and product management resources to address the unique needs of healthcare payers, providers, employers and patients. The solution can provide a return on investment - increasing revenue, enhancing the patient/consumer experience, streamlining receivables management, reducing cost and optimizing cash forecasting.

"PatientPOS helped us automate what was previously a highly manual payment collection process. Both our front- and back-end staff are collecting more than ever before," said Kent Burckhart, Financial Systems manager, Patient Business Services, Health First, Inc. "Our management team can now hold staff accountable for collections as PatientPOS makes it easy to track collections by individual associate and by location. PatientPOS also improved our customer service levels by eliminating manual posting errors and dramatically cutting the time between payment collection and posting to our patient accounting system. The payback on our investment in PatientPOS has been both clear and demonstrable."

"Efficient and patient-friendly payment options are increasingly competitive differentiators for healthcare providers as the trend toward consumer-directed healthcare shifts a greater share of healthcare costs to consumers. Payment solutions must make it easier for patients to pay and providers to collect," said David Huie, senior vice president and PatientPOS product manager in Wachovia's Treasury Services division.