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Press Release
nTelagent Poised For Rapid Growth With Healthcare Self-Pay Management System That Improves Management For Uninsured and Underinsured Patients
Company Builds Prestigious Customer Base, Completes Private Funding and Adds Key Strategic Partners
June 26, 2007 (Nashville, TN) --- nTelagent, Inc. announced today that it is positioned for rapid growth with a seasoned management team and investor group, expanded product offering and growing customer base. The company’s Self-Pay Management System is the premier upfront cash and overall collection management tool, which significantly improves the handling of financial accounts for both healthcare providers and their patients.
Self-pay is the portion of the medical bill for which the patient is responsible for payment. This includes co-pays and deductibles for insured patients and the full medical bill for uninsured patients. Historically, the vast majority of self-pay accounts were comprised of uninsured patients. With the shift to "consumer driven" healthcare plans with higher co-pays and deductibles for traditional insurance plans and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) with significantly higher co-pays and deductibles, a greater portion of self-pay accounts are derived from insured patients. Also, an increasing number of individuals who have the financial capacity are opting not to purchase health insurance. For example, approximately 11 million people in the US with annual incomes in excess of $50,000 do not have health insurance. nTelagent gives healthcare providers the tools and processes necessary to manage all types of self-pay accounts, both for uninsured patients and the growing level of insured patients.
For self-pay patients, nTelagent’s system helps ensure that their accounts are handled properly and consistently from the point of service and offers discounting and charity care, as is appropriate, based upon the individual healthcare provider’s business rules and accounting policies. These policies are typically a sliding scale, based upon the patient’s income.
For healthcare providers, nTelagent’s system ensures improvement in up-front cash flow, receivables, and overall 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 and deductibles.
“Our core value proposition is to increase upfront and overall collections, reducing bad debt expense for the healthcare service provider. Our Self-Pay Management System is the vehicle that enables this change,” states Earl Winter, founder, president and CEO of nTelagent. “The application moves beyond obtaining a credit score to establishing an economic profile of the patient via the assimilation of demographic data. nTelagent allows the healthcare provider to have a proactive connection and dialogue with the patient before the patient leaves the facility. This significantly enhances the opportunity to increase upfront and overall cash collections.”
“For health care patients, nTelagent’s system enables the financial accounting of their services to be handled appropriately and in a non-discriminatory manner, from the initial point of service,” states Winter. “This is accomplished by using the healthcare provider’s business rules to establish consistent implementation of policies and procedures, such as discounting and charity care. Other benefits include Medicaid screening, insurance verification, payment arrangement processing, and determining co-pay and deductibles.” “We are honored and privileged to have experienced healthcare investors and a growing base of customers that tell us this system specifically addresses the needs of today’s healthcare marketplace and improves operations and profitability,” states Winter. nTelagent is privately funded by a group of seasoned healthcare investors. An early investor in nTelagent is Marty Rash, former founder, chairman and CEO of Province Healthcare Company, a publicly-held hospital management company (formerly NASDAQ:PRV) acquired by LifePoint Hospitals, Inc. (NASDAQ:LPNT) in 2005. Chris Hannon, former CFO of Province, is also a key investor in the Company. Other investors include Joel and Frank Gordon, through their investment firm, Crofton Capital; Jeff Rice, a healthcare entrepreneur and physician; and Laura Campbell, a private investor who was founding executive director of the Nashville Health Care Council. nTelagent’s investors are actively involved in the growth and development of the Company.
Investor Marty Rash states, “Healthcare providers are experiencing huge growth in services to the uninsured and underinsured that they are ill-equipped to handle. nTelagent gives healthcare providers easy-to-use tools they need to make patient account decisions at the point-of-service, as well as to measure and track progress on a daily basis. These tools are customized to each provider’s specific business rules and collections philosophy.”
nTelagent currently has ten customers representing various segments of the health care industry. These segments comprise hospitals, physician practices, specialty clinics, home health care, emergency room outsourcing, and collections companies. The Company is in advanced discussions with a large number of potential customers. nTelagent is adding strategic partners as well as other solution partners, such as eligibility and medical banking partners. Medical banking partners provide healthcare patients with various financing options to pay their accounts.
nTelagent’s customers include e+healthcare, a provider of outpatient cancer services at centers across the country. Tim Petrikin, CEO of e+healthcare, states, “nTelagent is solving a problem for us and has improved our operations. It enables us to better manage our patient accounting at the point-of-service, making appropriate up-front collections and better accounting for receivables. It allows us to more easily monitor and track our patient accounts on an ongoing basis. The system was implemented quickly, over a six week period.”
Nationwide, bad debt among healthcare providers is currently in excess of $30 billion and is growing at a double-digit annual growth rate. Today there are approximately 47 million uninsured Americans, which represent 16% of the population. Bad debt has increased significantly over the past year by as much as 30%. Most hospitals today have double digit bad debt. Some hospitals’ bad debt is in excess of 20% of net patient revenue, while other market segments are experiencing bad debt as high as 40% of net patient revenue.
For health care providers, small improvements in bad debt and uncollected receivables (5% or 10%) equate to very large dollars. nTelagent has already implemented customers who will experience improvements in bad debt and uncollected receivables by as much as 20% or greater.
nTelagent’s corporate headquarters is in Franklin, TN, just outside of Nashville. For more information, visit www.nTelagent.com.
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