Article: Smart Patient ID Cards Could Save You Money

By Ken Terry

Would you like to get paid faster and devote less staff time to billing and collections? Both goals could be achieved if you had a better method of checking the insurance eligibility of patients and of estimating their financial responsibility. The key to doing that — and to eliminating repetitive, error-prone front-desk work — might be a "smart" patient ID card.

The Medical Group Management Association is promoting the use of these smart cards through its new Project SwipeIT. The association aims to persuade payers, software vendors, and practices to "initiate processes to adopt standardized, machine-readable patient ID cards by Jan.1, 2010."

Most of the more than 100 million patient ID cards in use have no machine-readable elements, and front-desk personnel must now photocopy the cards for their records. Many cards are hard to read, and the only benefit information they typically include are copay amounts. Staffers sometimes make errors when entering demographic and insurance information from these cards into their billing systems, causing denials and resubmissions.

MGMA estimates that machine-readable patient ID cards could save physician offices and hospitals as much as $1 billion a year by eliminating unnecessary administrative work and denied claims. In addition, some insurers, including Humana and UnitedHealthcare, now offer real-time claims adjudication that can be more easily triggered by using their smart cards. Offices that take advantage of this capability can speed up plan payments and determine what patients owe before they leave the office. That can help reduce self-pay A/R and bad debt.

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