Brightree’s Release 21

• By David Kopf
• Jan 01, 2009

New version adds major payment posting feature, plus dashboard view and GPS.

As providers increasingly rely on HME software systems to make their businesses run more intelligently and cost-effectively, those systems are evolving with their needs. Brightree LLC’s new Release 21 is case in point.

The software system provider has unveiled major new enhancements to its software: automatic payment posting features for Medicaid and private payor insurance; an Executive Dashboard feature to help providers monitor their businesses; and a GPS delivery-tracking service.
“The latest release has multiple capabilities and they’re all geared toward reducing DSOs, which is a major issue for providers, and increasing profitability through workflow efficiencies,” says Brightree President and CEO Dave Cormack.

Auto-Payment Posting

The big breakthrough in Release 21 for Brightree, which currently has more than 800 users, is Auto-Payment Posting for state Medicaids and commercial payors. While most HME software systems let providers automatically post payments to invoices for Medicare claims, automated posting for Medicaid and private payor requires handling a dizzying array of electronic remittance formats for each payor.

And this is exactly what Brightree has integrated into Release 21, Cormack says. Brightree, which dedicates at least 60 employees to customer service and product development, came up with a common file structure that lets providers confidently post payments with 95 percent accuracy for at least 80 percent of the commercial and Medicaid payors.

The system intelligently matches the individual line items of payments to the individual invoices on the system wholesale. And if there is a problem with a claim, Brightree runs its own clearinghouse behind the scenes, which means the buck stops with Brightree. The company’s customer service and eClaims Concierge are there to address any issues.

This can represent a major labor savings for providers that dedicate staff to handling Medicaid and private payor claims. And if providers are not posting these payments because it is too labor intensive, then they don’t understand what their DSOs are for those payors.

“For example, a provider might employ four full-time people manually posting remittances for commercial payors such as Blue Cross Blue Shield,” Cormack explains. “The provider would redeploy three of those people as a result of this.

“This is going to help smaller independent providers get a real accurate read of their DSOs for Medicaid and commercial payors.”

The Executive Dashboard

The new version’s Executive Dashboard provides a simple executive overview of key performance indicators. With a few clicks of a mouse, the owner or manager of an HME provider business can see how their business is performing across the board.

The feature eliminates the need for a provider to task a spreadsheet specialist with cobbling together this sort of data into a single “master control” report such as the Executive Dashboard. Instead, it is a tool that instantly delivers real time business performance intelligence to help the provider better run its operations.
“They don’t need to deal with spreadsheets or moving data to get this information,” Cormack says.

And, data on the new Medicaid and private payor payment posting data, along with other reimbursement indicators, is part of the Executive Dashboard view. “You’ll be able to look at, for example, DSOs for all payors, or specific named payors, now that you’re posting them,” Cormack explains.

The Executive Dashboard can be customized to provide an instant view on the metrics providers want to monitor, and is tied to a custom reporting system in Brightree that lets them delve deeper into their business data, according to Cormack.
“For example, at a higher level, you see something interesting DSO-wise that, as an owner, you want to look at. If you want to drill further or do analysis, this will let you do that,” he says. “You can go from the summary information, where you might see some trends, into the detail.”

GPS Delivery Tracking; Upgrading

Thanks to a partnership with AirVersent, Brightree users can now track delivery via GPS. AirVersant is a worldwide provider of GPS delivery systems to large companies such as Staples, and the technology is now embedded in Brightree.

Users must invest in the ruggedized GPS units, which can range as low as $300, and pay for the GPS service, which costs roughly $100 a month, Cormack says.To take advantage of the new release, users simply need to learn the new system. Starting in December, Brightree began moving its customers to Release 21 over a phased basis that continues into this month. The process begins with user training and then implementation of the new system.

Since Brightree works on a web-based, software as a service (SAAS) model, no software installations are required on the client side. Users accounts are simply upgraded to Release 21, and when providers log in via their web browser, they will see the new version.

Brightree LLC
(888) 598-7797
www.brightree.com

This article originally appeared in the January 2009 issue of HME Business.