SAN DIEGO – A financial services firm and a healthcare services and technology company are partnering to offer an integrated set of claim and payment processing solutions and plan to target participation from health plans as a first step.
The partnership involves the healthcare solutions business of JPMorgan Chase and RelayHealth Inc., the connectivity services group of the McKesson Corp.
The organizations announced the relationship in late June and discussed implications at the Annual National Institute of the Healthcare Financial Management Association meeting in San Diego.
The relationship is one of the first linking a financial services company with a healthcare vendor with the goal of facilitating electronic claims payment and fund transfers. Other financial services companies are making acquisitions and taking steps to gain healthcare customers.
Moving to electronic transactions in the revenue processing cycle will speed communications between providers, payers, consumers and others, said James Bodenbender, senior vice president and general manager of RelayHealth.
RelayHealth has been looking for ways to facilitate electronic transactions, and JPMorgan Chase was looking for ways to provide its services to the healthcare market, Bodenbender said.
“It was natural for us to get together with JPMorgan Chase,” he said. “We had been doing a fair amount of analysis for about 18 months, but we couldn’t solve the cash flow issues without getting some help from the financial services side.”
While Bodenbender said the partnership is probably the first of its kind in the healthcare industry, he expects other such ventures to pop up between healthcare connectivity companies and financial services firms.
RelayHealth is open to other relationships with similar vendors or financial services companies.
“As an industry, we need to work toward interoperability, like you see with ATMs,” he said. “We’re trying to do the same thing – we’re focused on getting the cash to the right place.”
RelayHealth hopes to approach payers initially with its joint services with JPMorgan Chase, Bodenbender said. “In working with the payers, we can see how we can get to electronic fund transfers,” he said. “Then we can solicit the provider.”
Electronically moving funds will produce early savings by breaking industry reliance on paper checks and other forms of business communication.
“We believe that in working with RelayHealth’s connectivity platform that we can create significant improvements to the healthcare payment system,” said Martha Beard, senior vice president and head of JPMorgan Chase’s Healthcare solutions business. “The combination of JPMorgan Chase’s expertise in supporting healthcare financial transactions and RelayHealth’s solutions will change the way insurers and healthcare providers interact in the future.”