Zelis and Rectangle Health Team to Streamline Medical Payments

A pair of health-focused FinTechs say their new tool drastically reduces processing times for medical payments.

Zelis and Rectangle Health announced their solution for healthcare and dental practices Wednesday (July 19), saying it streamlines a number of manual steps in digital payments, such as receiving virtual payments and entering card transactions into merchant processing terminals, into one automated process. 

“Through the Zelis & Rectangle Health straight-through processing platform, providers realize increased savings in processing time from 60% to 90%, freeing them to care for healthcare consumers and their staff to focus on higher-value tasks,” the firms said in a news release.

The solution is powered by Zelis’ Advanced Payments Platform and Rectangle Health’s Practice Management Bridge and automates both healthcare insurance payments and any out-of-pocket payments straight to providers’ existing revenue management system. 

It also lets payers make digital payments directly into providers’ accounts without any manual intervention or the need to share banking information.

“Straight-through processing, an automated process done by electronic transfers with no manual intervention involved, streamlines and simplifies the entire insurance claim process and stands to transform the financial and accounting landscape for every healthcare organization,” said Yusuf Qasim, president of payments optimization at Zelis.

PYMNTS spoke with Qasim late last year in the wake of the study, “Healthcare In The Digital Age: Consumers See Unified Platforms As Key To Better Health,” our collaboration with Lynx. 

Key findings included the fact that nearly 80% of consumers said they wished to pay medical bills and access health information using a single digital platform.

“We believe the healthcare financial journey from care to payment is broken,” Qasim told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster. “I’ve been through that journey where sometimes I have a bill, but I know it’s not a bill, and when do I pay it? I don’t know where to go.”

Zelis’ and Rectangle’s partnership is happening as healthcare facilities are taking increasing steps toward digitization to lower costs, as noted in PYMNTS/Corcentric collaboration, “Digital Payments: A Changing Economy Sparks New Priorities for Systems Spending.”

“CFOs, cost reduction is a primary driver for increased investment in digital technology to streamline systems, including accounts receivable, accounts payable, procurement and working capital platforms,” PYMNTS wrote last week.

The same report noted that reducing “needless employee hours in reconciliation that may be better applied with more meaningful tasks could improve efficiencies and fill out part of the debt gap some facilities are facing.”