Electronic Claims Submission in the US Is Lagging Too – 90% of Reimbursements Still Paper Checks

These are some pretty high numbers here at 90% of all medical claims still being cut on paper, not quite as bad as EHR adoption, but still with the technology do go electronic and the time it saves, well, we are back to the old word here called “change”.

If you have ever done any medical billing, and I have, it’s nightmare. When you get a check you have to manually go in and apply the amounts, unless you use software that does it for you and yes there less errors this way, but again and again I see offices that submit claims either on paper or through a clearing house and when the check comes, they sit down manually and credit each patient/claim. That takes time!

There are companies that do this for small fees, and then some like Office Ally that do most all of it for free and charge the payers, so gee, when you can get most or all of the services for free, is a small learning curve too much to ask? Well, for some it is, speaking from some of the offices I visit, they won’t budge an inch. BD

Right now, 25 percent of physician claims are submitted on paper each year. That's a whopping 3 billion claims still being handled the old-fashioned way. The vast majority of those claims are being filed by small provider offices with one to five physicians. Meanwhile, a full 90 percent of payments to providers come in the form of paper checks rather than electronic transfers.
The healthcare industry simply can't allow things to stay this way, argues MD On-Line CEO Bill Bartzak, who spoke at last week's session of the World Health Care Innovation and Technology Congress in Alexandria, Va

Along with some other competitors, Bartzak has started working with payers to streamline their claims and electronic payment processes. One of his clients is giant health plan WellPoint, which has been working to convert paper submitters to electronic claims.
Over the last 12 months, WellPoint has been able to convert more than 550,000 claims, that would otherwise have been on paper, to digital submissions. Last month alone, nearly 110,000 newly-digital claims were submitted by more than 5,000 practices.

Electronic claims submission could save $11B per year - FierceHealthIT