IPayX and ARM Solutions partner to offer collection services for hospitals and physicians’ offices

Sep 29 2009

Internet Payment Exchange (IPayX) (www.ipayx.com), a provider of electronic billing and payment (EBP) technology and customer service solutions to healthcare providers, utility companies, municipal governments and other organizations, announced an alliance with Ventura, Calif.-based Accelerated Revenue Management (ARM) Solutions to offer clients soft collection capabilities through IPayX’s eInvoice Delivery Service^SM and eCareView Healthcare Billing Portal^SM.

Adding the soft collections feature as an option gives healthcare providers and other commercial billers the opportunity to recover late payments, specifically those that are 60 to 300 days overdue, before they become bad debt. For a flat fee per account, ARM Solutions contacts delinquent customers with communications approved by the client. Working closely with the client ensures that collection methods are respectful and maintain a positive relationship with customers.

Payments recovered during soft collections are submitted directly to the client through its existing IPayX customer payment channels. Once a late payment is received, IPayX updates the account to provide real-time status of payment activity. This process helps eliminate issues such as confusion among customers about which organization they need to pay, the client or the collection agency. Benefits of this cost-effective collection service include reduced “float” on incoming recovered payments, higher collection rates, fewer staff resources needed to handle collections and increased value for the client’s technology investment.

“Traditional third-party collection agencies often alienate customers and typically charge an average of 32 percent of collected amounts as payment, but they only collect an average of less than 16 percent of the accounts assigned to them,” said Brad Jadwin, ARM Solutions president. “Our flat fee collection services are different because they are based on a fixed price per account and recovery rates average more than 40 percent. More importantly, the goal of the flat fee approach is to treat delinquent consumers with dignity during the collection process and to retain them as customers. Relationships with customers have traditionally been an area of concern for healthcare providers and are important to many other billers as well.”

“We find that with the soft collection process from ARM Solutions leverages our clients’ investments in payment systems and enables them to implement soft collections with no impact to their internal IT staff,” said Douglas Braun, president and CEO of IPayX. “We partnered with ARM Solutions to provide hospitals, physicians’ offices and commercial billers with collection services that are an attractive alternative to using typical third-party collection agencies.”