Physician practice opts for self-service

Orlando Internal Medicine is expediting the collection of patient co-payments, deductibles and payer reimbursement through its use of self-service solutions from Greatwater Software and NCR, reports Reuters.

"All providers face the challenge of improving the speed and efficiency of payment collection, particularly at a time when patient bad debt continues to increase," said Pradeep Vangala, MD, president of Orlando Internal Medicine.

Through its automation of the patient registration process, Orlando Internal Medicine enables patients to quickly check in for medical appointments, make co-payments, sign consent forms and update health history information, resulting in reduced wait times and increased collections.

Business intelligence and analytics, as well as self-service portals, are the top technologies for enhancing competitiveness over the next five years at high-growth midsize organisations, according to a new global study of CIOs by IBM, states CBR Online.

According to the study, 86% of midmarket CIOs have identified business intelligence and analytics, the ability to see patterns in vast amounts of data and extract actionable insights, and three-quarters chose self-service portals.

These results and other findings are detailed in the 'midmarket executive summary', part of the 2009 Global Chief Information Officer Study.

Verizon Business has expanded its suite of professional services to include consulting and management services to help customers integrate identity and access management into their voice and Web self-service solutions, says, CRMXchange.

This will enable customer contact centre end-users to securely engage in transactions with businesses or agencies, using either voice-phone prompts or the business' Web site.

Verizon Business contact centre consultants are available to help enterprises design and deploy complete, tailored self-service systems, leveraging Verizon's identity and access management system, which provides one secure source for user verification.