RecondoTalk

May 2010

Recondo Technology Announces Consolidated Hospital and Physician Statements
— Global Patient Financial Responsibility (GPFR)

Recondo® has released Global Patient Financial Responsibility (GPFR) as part of the company's SurePayHealth® Software as a Service offering for hospitals. SurePayHealth GPFR integrates both hospital (facility) and physician (professional) charges on the same patient statement.

"A global statement can improve a hospital's financial performance," said Rick Adam, Recondo Founder and CEO. "Hospitals tell us they've waited years to have this capability to immediately show how much each patient owes the hospital and how much each patient owes the doctor. A global statement is also more understandable for the patient."

"The New York Times just reported that as recently as 2005, more than two-thirds of medical practices were owned by the physicians themselves," continued Adam. "But now more than 50 percent of US physicians are working directly for and getting paid by healthcare systems. GPFR helps these integrated delivery systems print and present statements of patient financial responsibility, accurately detailing charges for the hospital facility and the respective physicians, such as surgeons and anesthesiologists."

Meet Shelly Walters

Shelly serves as Revenue Cycle Consultant for Recondo and is responsible for gathering data and activating Recondo services at customer hospitals across the United States. She also helps train users in all aspects of Recondo services.

Shelly brings her extensive knowledge and experience of the entire hospital revenue cycle to her customers. She spent a decade at Upper Valley Medical Center (UVMC), a 139-bed hospital in Troy, Ohio. During her tenure at UVMC, Shelly gained a thorough knowledge of hospital revenue cycle management, including chargemaster coding, compliance, and patient access/financial services. She started her career as a Patient Representative where she provided patient registration, billing, coding, and transcription support for the clinical rehab department. Her next role at UVMC was as a Chargemaster Specialist where she developed the hospital's exploding chargemaster, improving compliance and charge capture. From there, Shelly became the Compliance Manager responsible for coordinating the hospital and physician office compliance with billing, coding, and documentation standards per CMS standards. She finished her time at UVMC as the Registration Manager where she developed an express registration and patient financial advocacy implementation for outpatient services and emergency room, increasing point of service collections, reducing A/R and bad debt.

Before joining Recondo, Shelly was employed by HTP/RelayHealth as a Senior Manager of Implementations, where she was responsible for managing the RevRunner implementation team. She also served as a consultant to healthcare patient access/financial services in developing workflow practices to enhance insurance eligibility, billing claim statusing, as well as opportunities to increase point of service collections.

Shelly earned a Masters in Healthcare Administration from Ohio University and a Bachelors Degree in Business Management from Urbana University. Shelly is also a member of NAHAM, National Association of Healthcare Access Management and COPAM, Central Ohio Patient Account Managers.

Outside Recondo, Shelly's three daughters keep her busy with school and other activities. Additionally, her husband, Jim, is a world-ranked horseshoe pitcher. He placed third in the Mens Division A-1 2009 World Tournament. He practices in their backyard where they have a professionally designed regulation court. Photo courtesy of Darin Omtvedt.

Introducing Omni278 UnitedHealthcare Admission Notification Service
— Simplifies Submission of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) 278 Family of Authorization Messages

This service provides a standard electronic EDI 278 transaction to UnitedHealthcare conforming to new UnitedHealthcare rules for notification of a patient admission. Currently UnitedHealthcare requests hospitals to submit EDI notification of each inpatient admission within 24 hours.

The Recondo Omni278 service offers hospitals an easy-toimplement service for delivering the admission notification to UnitedHealthcare. Omni278 facilitates the submission process by accepting admission data in a variety of forms, including an electronic file, an email message, a phone call, or a fax. Omni278 converts this information into a 278 transaction and submits it electronically. Providers then use the Recondo Control Center Worklist to obtain status of the UnitedHealthcare notification number and to manage and reconcile accounts.

"Recondo extends our software services to hospitals by making it easy to accommodate the UnitedHealthcare procedures and eliminate the risk of denial because a notification was submitted after the 24-hour deadline," said Rick Adam, Recondo Founder and CEO. "Recondo is poised to help hospitals deliver accurate and timely electronic admission notifications. As the industry moves from manual tasks to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) formats, such as the 278 family of authorization messages, healthcare will become more efficient."

Recondo services are web-based Software as a Service (SaaS), requiring no capital budget and no additional hardware or software installation. Recondo services are developed using high-speed, high-volume rules-based processing, giving hospitals unmatched and immediate access to real-time data.

Above: Your tailored web page with your UHC admission acknowledged by UHC.

Recondo Technology Announces Organizational Membership in Health Level Seven (HL7)
— Standards and formats to benefit the entire continuum of healthcare stakeholders

Recondo has become an Organizational Member of Health Level Seven® International, the global authority on standards for interoperability of health information technology. Health Level Seven has members in over 55 countries. The Health Level Seven (HL7) vision is to create the best and most widely used standards in healthcare.

Founded in 1987, HL7 is a nonprofit organization composed of more than 4,000 members worldwide, including healthcare vendors, providers, payers, government agencies, and others. In the US alone, 90 percent of the largest health information system vendors are HL7 members. HL7 provides standards for interoperability that improve care delivery, optimize workflow, reduce ambiguity, and enhance knowledge transfer among all its stakeholders.

"Recondo embraces the HL7 standards to offer our customers consistent and solid transactions across applications, databases, and software services," said John Magee, Recondo Vice President of Customer Operations. "The healthcare industry regularly uses hardware and software systems that were created more than 30 years ago, and these legacy systems share communication and data with new and robust applications and software services. With the HL7 standards, guidelines, and methodologies, healthcare systems can communicate, share information, and process data consistently and uniformly. We're developing our software services to use HL7 standards to help streamline connectivity and data across virtually all healthcare computing platforms."

According to a McKinsey study, it costs the US healthcare industry 15 percent of every dollar to collect payment, while retail takes 2 percent and financial services requires only 1 percent to collect. This excessive administrative overhead contributes greatly to the cost of US healthcare. All Recondo software services are developed using a new generation of highvolume, high-speed rules processing, delivering performance, speed, and the ability to handle ongoing changes in a highly complex business environment. Combining standards, such as HL7, with sophisticated rules processing systems significantly reduces administrative costs in the hospital revenue cycle.

Exciting New EligibilityPlus Functionality

EligibilityPlus™ now provides even MORE data than other eligibility vendors and continues to provide patient eligibility information via easy to read and understand screens. Below is the new EligibilityPlus Summary Screen, which displays a summary of benefits for each eligible payer on one screen, including:

• Patient information — full name, address, birth date, gender, ID, etc.
• Other Payer Alert — if an additional payer exists for a patient, the Summary Screen displays the other payer(s) name and ID
• In Network Benefit Details — displays benefits information including effective/term date, deductible, out of pocket, lifetime maximum, etc.

The Summary Screen offers a powerful, unprecedented view into your patients' eligibility details — at a glance.

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February 2010

Recondo Technology Closes Fiscal Year 2009 with Record Results — Strong Sales and Activations Illustrate Solid Customer Acceptance and User Momentum

Recondo Technology, a leading provider of revenue cycle solutions for the healthcare industry, announced today that Recondo® closed fiscal year 2009 with a record-setting number of new hospital customers. In Q4 2009, 30 contracts were signed to acquire Recondo software services. These 30 hospital systems comprise more than 100 discrete facilities that will activate and use Recondo services.

"Recondo closed the year by overachieving our Q4 forecasts in both our direct and indirect sales channels," said Rick Adam, Recondo Founder and CEO. "Our success generates significant revenue momentum moving into 2010, and we continue to bring new customers online with our three software services, SurePayHealth®, EligibilityPlus™, and Authorization-Denial Prevention (Auth-DP™). Our active hospitals are collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars at point-of-service, and use our advanced eligibility services to reduce phone calls or online queries to payers. Hospitals have a renewed sense of immediacy to lower costs and reduce bad debt, and Recondo intends to move more and more services from the back office to the front of the hospital revenue cycle."

SurePayHealth offers an accurate statement of patient financial responsibility at Point of Service, verifying patient identity, eligibility, and benefits, and accurately calculating the patient fee. After activating SurePayHealth, hospitals increase cash collections by tens of thousands of dollars every month.

Eligibility Plus gives hospitals the most complete view of government and commercial patient insurance benefits available in the industry. With a complete understanding of insurance benefits, hospitals immediately identify specific coverage, simplify patient registration workflows, reduce claim rework, and assess patient liability.

Authorization-Denial Prevention (Auth-DP) increases cash flow by reducing a hospital's costly payer denials. Auth-DP identifies precertification requirements and authorization at the front of the revenue cycle, increasing authorization coverage and reducing denials by as much as 75 percent.

Recondo services are Software as a Service (SaaS), requiring no capital budget and no additional hardware or software installation. Recondo services are developed using highspeed, high-volume rules-based processing, giving hospitals unmatched and immediate access to real-time data.

Meet Brandon Childs

Brandon serves as Vice President of Revenue Cycle Services and has responsibility for many premier Recondo accounts.

During 14 years with Accenture, Brandon managed many consulting projects across both payers and providers including managed care organizations, hospitals, physician clinics, IPAs, and state Medicaid organizations. He possesses extensive experience in developing and implementing advanced solutions to meet complex needs, and focuses on helping customers achieve maximum value through implementations. While at Accenture, he worked with 10 of the 12 largest commercial payer organizations as well as conducted revenue cycle review studies. Prior to that, he worked at Integrated Health Systems specializing in rapid implementations of hospital information systems at small/medium-sized hospitals.

Brandon holds a BS degree in Business Administration and Finance from the University of Northern Colorado. In his spare time, Brandon and his wife April keep busy with their three boys skiing/boarding, camping and anything that "gets the boys outdoors."

SurePayHealth Tech Tip

If you train your staff to enter the amount collected and the reason code in the collection screen, Recondo Technology can send you an Excel report. You can use this report to show who is collecting, the percentage of calculations to collections, and the payers percentage collected per payer and per reason.

The reason codes can be customized to show trends in collections as well, such as "Patient Refused to Pay," "Partial Payments," "Payment Terms," "Patient Refused Treatment," and other options. These tools and processes allow you to refine your collection process and manage your staff using real metrics.

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September 2009

Recondo Technology Wins Red Herring 100 North America Award

In May, Recondo Technology was selected by Red Herring as one of the Red Herring 100 North America, designating Recondo® as one of the top 100 companies playing a leading role in innovation and technology.

Red Herring is a leading independent research and consulting organization that recognizes companies based on quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. Rick Adam, Recondo CEO, said of the achievement, "Our selection underscores Recondo's effort to streamline the hospital revenue cycle, reduce hospitals' cost of doing business, and become a leading contributor to lowering health care costs in the US."

Recondo Technology Introduces EligibilityPlus, Providing an Unprecedented Level of Patient Insurance Benefits

Without accurate and timely eligibility determination, hospitals experience countless downstream problems, such as delayed payment, rework, low patient satisfaction, billing errors, denials, and bad debt. These operational problems, created by inaccurate eligibility determination, result in patient dissatisfaction and missed financial opportunities.

EligibilityPlus resolves these challenging issues by delivering the most comprehensive insurance eligibility benefits and data available. EligibilityPlus achieves this unprecedented benefit detail by combining standard eligibility Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transactions with benefits available only on payer web-portals.

"EligibilityPlus provides us with more complete patient benefit information in an easy-to-read format compared to other eligibility software," said Val Kraus, Director of Admissions & Case Management, Boulder Community Hospital, Boulder, Colorado.

"Recondo Technology streamlines the critical information flow between providers and payers," stated Rick Adam, Recondo CEO. "With a comprehensive understanding of patient insurance benefits, providers can identify specific coverage, simplify patient registration workflows, reduce claim rework, and assess patient liability."

Click here for more information.

Meet Kirk Kaynor

Kirk Kaynor serves as Vice President of Recondo Professional Services, and is responsible for all activation of Recondo Software Services along with ongoing customer support, professional services, and special projects.

Kirk's career embraces almost three decades of consultative sales and professional services success, especially in areas of process improvement, cost savings, and customer satisfaction. Kirk has been instrumental in helping companies achieve high levels of customer adoption and retention, and to provide overarching customer value through technology improvements.

The Recondo Professional Services team includes health care professionals who are ready and able to help hospitals reenvision the revenue cycle and use Recondo technology to integrate crucial business processes across all patient, provider, and payer services, presenting accurate, real-time eligibility status, benefits verification, accurate statements of patient financial responsibility prior to service, authorization approval and notification, denial management, and reconciliation.

Recondo services seamlessly interface and integrate to provider scheduling systems, HIS systems, and other technologies, increasing cash flow, reducing bad debt, lowering administrative costs, and adding significant, measurable value across both the payment and revenue cycles.

Recondo keeps Kirk busy, but away from work, Kirk watches college and professional football and he and his wife Elise enjoy time with their six children.

SurePayHealth® Tech Tip

After you generate a statement of patient financial responsibility, it is much quicker to Navigate the screens of the estimate if you use the Tabs located at the top. (Tabs: Demographics, Verification, Procedures, Benefits, Calculation, and Collection, circled in blue on the screen).

When you use the Continue button (located at the lower left of your screen and circled in yellow), SurePayHealth performs an action, from contacting the payer to producing a calculation.

By using the Tab buttons at the top of your screen, you can display information without performing unnecessary actions. Using the Tabs, you can access information much quicker.

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