Researchers Submit Patent Application, “Healthcare Universal Patient Payment Billing Records”, for Approval (USPTO 20230031800): Patent Application

2023 FEB 16 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Washington, D.C., NewsRx journalists report that a patent application by the inventor Dershem, Michael K. (Voorhees, NJ, US), filed on October 7, 2022, was made available online on February 2, 2023.

No assignee for this patent application has been made.

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Today there exist many ways for a patient to make payment to an individual healthcare provider from which the patient may have had services performed and for which a balance is due. This balance may be due because the patient has a balance after a third party (e.g. insurance company, Medicare, Medicaid) has made their portion of payment responsibility; or it could be a co-pay; or the patient has assumed all financial responsibility of services rendered by the healthcare provider (e.g. Doctor, hospital, clinic). These payments, called “patient-responsible portions of medical bills” (PRPMB)can be made by check, credit card, debit card, money orders in person, via the mail, over the phone or over the internet. . For the insurance carriers and government program payment providers, there already exists “clearing houses” that provide mechanisms to aggregate payments to providers, but not such systems exists for aggregating PRPMBs for patients.

“There are many issues that exist in the current methods for paying the PRPMB. One such problem is that every provider must be paid directly for their own unique services rendered to the patient. For instance, many unique services are provided to a sick child when a responsible party takes the child to the local Emergency Room. After being triaged the child is seen by a physician contracted to the ER. The child might need to get x-rays. The child is then subsequently released after an overnight stay and sees the pediatrician for follow-up.

“After all of these and other services are rendered, the responsible party would then receive separate billing statements from each individual service provider requesting payment. After insurance pays its obligations to the individual providers, should the responsible party want to pay the PRPMB the individual providers online via a credit card, the patient would go on to the providers’ own websites or a separate payment page that is given on the patient’s billing statement. Often times the patient will need to set up an account through these individual entities’ websites. Once the time consuming activity of setting up the account is completed, the patient can then place their payment over the website and the payment is accepted. This transaction is processed by the merchant services provider of the unique medical provider. Thus, if this responsible party had seven different statements she would need to do this seven times, even though this may be the only and last time of any interaction with a particular medical provider.

“There is a need for systems, devices and methods to solve the aforementioned needs in the art, and other related needs. The art has not heretofore solved these problems.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent application: “The principles disclosed herein provide gateways for PRPMB transactions, regardless of healthcare provider or merchant services (Credit card processing) provider. These principles provide uniform, consistent and secure devices, methods and systems that allow a patient to make PRPMB payments on one website or by one phone call or physical address regardless of the entity that is due payment, or when multiple entities are due payment.

“The present principles include, but are not limited to, a patient billing record which will be issued by an entity responsible for collecting from a patient amounts owed for healthcare services rendered to the patient comprising; a field indicating a provider of the healthcare services rendered by the provider to the patient, a field indicating the healthcare services rendered to the patient by the healthcare provider, a field indicating a date on which the healthcare services were rendered to the patient, a field indicating an amount paid for the services by an entity other than the patient, a field indicating a patient-responsible portions of medical bills (“PRPMB”) which is remaining due after the amount paid for the services by an entity other than the patient, and a field providing a unique patient identifier which identifies the patient and allows an entity which collects the PRPMB to electronically identify the patient and that the patient owes the PRPMB.

“The present principles also include, but are not limited to, methods and gateways for allowing a patient to pay patient-responsible portions of medical bills (“PRPMB”) which is remaining due after an amount paid for healthcare services by an entity other than the patient; comprising; a processor configured to aggregate how many healthcare service providers must be paid a portion of the PRPMB that is associated with a bill that the patient receives and which are further uniquely identified with the patient through a unique patient identifier on the bill, and which will determine how the PRPMB is to be distributed if more than one healthcare service provider is due a portion of the PRPMB uniquely associated with the patient, and a processor configured to receive medical bill records associated with the healthcare service providers and for which PRPMB is due and to provide routing information to the gateway so that the PRPMB can be allocated amongst the healthcare service providers after the aggregator processor determines that PRPMB are due to healthcare service providers from patients with unique identifiers.

“The present principles will be best understood by those with skill in the art by reading the following Detailed Description in conjunction with the drawings which are first described briefly below.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A patient billing record which will be issued by an entity responsible for collecting from a patient amounts owed for healthcare services rendered to the patient comprising: a field indicating a provider of the healthcare services rendered by the provider to the patient; a field indicating the healthcare services rendered to the patient by the healthcare provider; a field indicating a date on which the healthcare services were rendered to the patient; a field indicating an amount paid for the services by an entity other than the patient; a field indicating a patient -responsible portions of medical bills (“PRPMB”) which is remaining due after the amount paid for the services by an entity other than the patient; and a field providing a unique patient identifier which identifies the patient and allows an entity which collects the PRPMB to electronically identify the patient and that the patient owes the PRPMB.

“2. The patient billing record recited in claim 1, further comprising a tag associated with the unique patent identifier field which allows the patient to pay the PRPMB at a website or gateway which is adapted to read the tag to recognize that the PRPMB is due in accordance with the unique patient identifier.

“3. The patent billing record recited in claim 2, further comprising a field indicating a website or gateway which directs the patient to access to pay the PRPMB with the tag.

“4. The patient billing record recited in claim 3, further comprising a field indicating a remittance address for payment of the PRPMB should the patient not desire to go to the website or gateway to pay the PRPMB with the tag.”

For additional information on this patent application, see: Dershem, Michael K. Healthcare Universal Patient Payment Billing Records. U.S. Patent Application Number 20230031800, filed October 7, 2022 and posted February 2, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20230031800)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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