Patent Issued for Network-based marketplace service pricing tool for facilitating purchases of bundled services and products (USPTO 11030666)

2021 JUN 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Aipperspach, Ryan (San Francisco, CA, US), Ketchel, III, Paul J. (Nashville, TN, US), Martirosyan, Kar (Nashville, TN, US), Osborne, Ani (Nashville, TN, US), Schmidt, Daniel (Albany, CA, US), filed on November 15, 2019, was published online on June 8, 2021.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11030666 is Mdsave Shared Services Inc. (Brentwood, Tennessee, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to the marketing and facilitating the sale of services and products. More specifically, exemplary embodiments relate to methods and apparatuses for providing a web-based mechanism allowing prospective patients to search for and compare healthcare services and products offered by local providers, including bundled sets of services, and facilitating prepaid purchases of such healthcare services and products by prospective patients at discounted rates.

“The price of healthcare services varies depending on specialty, procedure, and physician practice. In the United States, many patients do not have access to a simple way to shop and compare the price of common medical procedures. Due to the current managed care based payor system in the US, the cost of treatment is often determined by managed care organizations.

“These managed care organizations have specific formularies for drugs and procedures designed specifically to patients’ individual health plans, which restrict the drugs and procedures available to patients in their particular plans. Patients have historically had no access to these price lists or formularies and have had very few tools to assist them in finding and comparing health care services or predetermining the cost of a procedure. Currently prospective patients who chose to compare medical costs are forced to conduct extensive, often inefficient, and time consuming research to compare medical procedures prior to treatment.

“The rising cost of healthcare is having a dramatic effect on the U.S. healthcare system. Healthcare costs continue to outpace pace inflationary growth, provider reimbursement rates continue to fall, and the cost of patient insurance premiums are increasing. To lower monthly premium costs, many patients are choosing to purchase (and employers are choosing to offer) high deductible health plans as an alternative to traditional higher premium PPO health plans.

“These high deductible plans require patients to pay cash payments for medical services until the high deductible is satisfied, and once this deductible has been met, the insurance carrier begins to cover medical costs. As a result, many patients are seeing exponential increases in out-of-pocket expenses for medical procedures and services. In addition to more patients selecting high deductible plans, many patients cannot afford increased payments and are becoming uninsured or underinsured. As the number of patients who are uninsured, underinsured, or on high deductible plans grows, the need for a mechanism that allows patients to find discounted medical services increases and an efficient payment system.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Exemplary embodiments of the present invention are related to an apparatus for facilitating purchases of services offered by service providers. The apparatus includes an application server providing a network service that is accessible to a plurality of users through a plurality of client systems communicatively coupled to the application server via a network and a data storage system storing a service offer database that is maintained by the application server.

“The service offer database comprises a plurality of service offer information records respectively associated with a plurality of service offers. The plurality of service offers includes at least one service offer for a bundled set of services. Each service offer information record comprises an indication of a primary service of the associated service offer, a purchase price for the associated service offer, a payment amount for the primary service, and compensation information for the primary service. Upon receiving purchase information for the user for purchasing the selected service offer from the client system, the network service is operable to issue a request to the funding source for funds corresponding to the purchase price included in the service offer information record associated with the selected service offer to process a purchase of the selected service offer by the user.

“In exemplary embodiments, each service offer for a bundled set of services comprises a bundled set of healthcare services provided by corresponding healthcare service providers.

“In exemplary embodiments, at least one service offer information record associated with a service offer for a bundled set of services further comprises an indication of a facility for performing the primary service, a facility fee for the facility, and compensation information for the facility fee.

“In exemplary embodiments, at least one service offer information record associated with a service offer for a bundled set of services further comprises an indication that at least one of the secondary services associated with the primary service is an optional secondary service.

“In exemplary embodiments, the data storage system stores a profile database that is maintained by the application server. The profile database comprises a respective account information record for each of a plurality of user accounts registered with the application server. The plurality of user accounts includes a plurality of customer accounts and a plurality of provider accounts. The account information record for each user account comprising information for authorizing a user accessing the network service from one of the client systems to access the network service in association with the user account.

“In exemplary embodiments, the plurality of provider accounts includes a plurality of physician accounts and a plurality of practice group accounts, the account information record for each practice group account comprises an indication of one or more of the physician accounts being affiliated with the practice group account.

“In exemplary embodiments, the data storage system stores a transaction information database that is maintained by the application server. The transaction information database comprises a respective purchase information record for each processed purchase, by a user accessing the network service from one of the client systems in association with a customer account, of a service offer that has been created by a user accessing the network service from one of the client systems in association with a provider account, the respective purchase information record for each processed purchase comprising an indication of the service offer information record associated with the purchased service offer and, for each of the primary service and any secondary service of the service offer, and an indication of whether the purchase has been redeemed with respect to the service.

“In exemplary embodiments, the network service, upon being accessed by a user of one of the client systems to process a purchase of a service offer, generates a voucher for the user that specifies a unique confirmation number for the purchase and the corresponding service provider for each of the primary service and any secondary service of the purchased service offer, and, for each of the primary service and any secondary service of the purchased service offer, sets the purchase information record for the processed purchase to indicate that the purchase has not been redeemed with respect to the service.

“Exemplary embodiments of the present invention that are related to computer-implemented processes and computer systems corresponding to the above-summarized exemplary embodiments directed to an apparatus are also described and claimed herein.

“The above-described and other features and advantages realized through the techniques of the present disclosure will be better appreciated and understood with reference to the following detailed description, drawings, and appended claims. Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects of the invention are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimed invention.

“The detailed description explains exemplary embodiments of the present invention, together with advantages and features, by way of example with reference to the drawings, in which similar numbers refer to similar parts throughout the drawings. The flow diagrams depicted herein are just examples. There may be many variations to these diagrams or the steps (or operations) described therein without departing from the spirit of the invention. For instance, the steps may be performed in a differing order, or steps may be added, deleted, or modified. All of these variations are considered to be within the scope of the claimed invention.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system comprising: a processor; and a memory operably coupled with the processor, wherein the memory comprises processor executable program instructions configured that when executed by the processor cause the apparatus to implement an application server for pricing offers of healthcare services by healthcare service providers, wherein the application server provides a network service, the network service including a pricing tool comprising an interactive pricing page with a set of accessible user interface controls to email prices, save changes and purchase healthcare services in which said pricing tool is accessible via a user interface on each of the client systems, the user interface rendering a common display structure to represent the network service provided by the application server for a user of a client; a virtual payment system manager linked to the application server; a data storage system comprising storing a plurality of service detail information records associated with a plurality of healthcare service sets, each healthcare service set identifying a primary service, a set of base pricing metrics for the primary service, and a first set of cost adjustment metrics for each of a plurality of geographic zones and wherein, the pricing tool is configured that upon a user accessing the pricing tool, the pricing tool determines a base physician fee for the primary service based on the set of base pricing metrics for the primary service included in the service detail information record, determine a location indication, based on the location stored in a session data object that specifies a location for performing the primary service, dynamically perform a calculation of an adjusted physician fee for the primary service based on the first set of cost adjustment metrics that corresponds to the location specified by the location indication, determine a recommended price for the indicated healthcare service set based on the adjusted physician fee calculated for the primary service, and render respective indications of the adjusted physician fee and the recommended price determined for the indicated healthcare service set, wherein the user interface provided by the client application includes a graphical user interface element that is accessible by the user and the user submit a request to the pricing tool for the indicated healthcare service set to be offered for purchase, and the pricing tool is configured to generate an information record, store the information record in association with the respective account information record, update the session data object on the application server, and send an electronic document to the user in a printable form; wherein, upon rendering the respective indications of the adjusted physician fee calculated for the primary service and the recommended price determined for the indicated healthcare service set, the pricing tool in response to receiving a request submitted from the user, direct a service offer information record associated with a service offer for the indicated healthcare service set to be established that comprises a plurality of other service offer information records, wherein the service offer information record that is established has an indication of the primary service, a purchase price based on the recommended price, and payment amount based on the adjusted physician fee calculated for the primary service, and wherein the data storage system further comprises a virtual money account database configured to maintain records of virtual funds of the user in a transaction marketplace system; wherein the virtual payment system manager is configured to allocate and distribute the virtual funds in the transaction marketplace system to virtual accounts of the user; wherein the application server is accessible via the network to, based on the plurality of service offer information records and the session data object, facilitate purchases of service offers selected from the plurality of service offers; and wherein the network service operated generating and transmitting a voucher for the user that includes a description of the purchased service offer.

“2. The system according to claim 1, wherein the data storage system further comprises a service offer database storing a bundled set of healthcare services offers.

“3. The system according to claim 2, further comprising a the application server configured with a machine learning algorithm, the application server communicatively coupled to the data storage system, the application server using the machine learning algorithm instructs the service offer database to store each healthcare service provider service corresponding to the user selection via the user interface and the application server displays the bundled set of healthcare services via the user interface.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the virtual payment system manager implemented by the processor executable program instructions executed by the application server further comprises: a virtual account management module configured to access the virtual money account database to maintain virtual money accounts; a communication module configured to generate notifications and reports with respect to the virtual money accounts; a virtual payment module configured to implement functionality for performing operations for facilitating payment processing; a transaction tracking module configured to dynamically perform updates to the accounting details pertaining to transactions; a virtual fund creation and disbursement module configured to implement functionality for creating or instantiating virtual fund objects within respective account information records for the virtual money accounts; and an adjustment module configured to implement functionality for performing operations for processing cancellation requests, refund requests, and other modifications to purchases of offered services and products.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the data storage system further comprises an insurance database programed to provide optimized bundled prices for the healthcare services, wherein the application server electronically submits an electronic claim to an insurance company and the application server receives a request to count the payment amount towards a patient’s deductible.

“6. The system of claim 5, wherein the application server further comprises a deductible checker to look up the patient’s deductible.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the application server further comprises a shopping cart to provide details of pricing of the healthcare services to the user.

“8. The system of claim 7, wherein the application server automatically communicates the shopping cart details of pricing to the user when the user registers for the healthcare service.

“9. The system of claim 8, wherein the application server verifies the pricing details in the shopping cart.

“10. The system of claim 1, wherein the application server further comprises a drug discount card for the user for subscription of healthcare services.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Aipperspach, Ryan. Network-based marketplace service pricing tool for facilitating purchases of bundled services and products. U.S. Patent Number 11030666, filed November 15, 2019, and published online on June 8, 2021. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11030666.PN.&OS=PN/11030666RS=PN/11030666

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