Health Tech | Shiv Gaglani

While most of our Health Tech coverage focuses on health innovations related to patient care, the elephant in the room is the other side of the equation: collections. This has become an increasingly opaque and convoluted process, further complicated by the fact that patients and their caregivers are battling illness. MedPilot aims to streamline this process. We had the opportunity to speak with co-founder Matt Shapiro about how they plan to do this.

What is MedPilot?

MedPilot helps health care billing departments improve the collection of patient balances, while reducing manual administrative tasks involved in the revenue cycle. With health care costs shifting to patients due to the increased use of high deductible health plans, and reimbursements being determined more by patient satisfaction, an efficient and low friction solution for collecting on these receivables provides more value than ever.

Our customer service and payments technology engages patients through automated but personalized communication, and facilitates payment plans and financial settlements based on personal circumstances to successfully resolve individual balances. Our expertise in direct marketing allows us to bring a data-driven approach to communicating with patients. We leverage user demographics and behavior, as well as performance analytics, to provide communication channels and customized content that connect patients securely to the billing process. We believe that in order to maximize collections and minimize patient frustration, providers must optimize the performance of their outreach.

How did you come up with the idea for MedPilot?

MedPilot began as a patient advocacy company when our co-founder, Jordan Brown, realized that the increasing challenges of understanding medical billing provided a clear opportunity to employ technology to expedite the path to clarity and fairness. He assembled a team to help him:, Jake Myers from health care consulting, Leonard Law and Rakinur Alam as software engineers, and myself from a digital marketing background. We then all got to work trying to fix this systemic issue within our healthcare system.

Every year, over 50 million Americans are sent to third-party debt collectors, and too many of them for the wrong reasons. Some didn’t receive their bills, while others couldn’t understand what their personal responsibility was, or perhaps the payment options didn’t work for them. As patient responsibilities grow to be a major component of our health care system, it becomes very clear that the health care industry can do a better job of working with them to resolve these issues.

Our co-founder and CEO, Jake Myers, has been working in revenue cycle management consulting for seven years. His perspective on medical collections helped our group to conclude that we would best scale our impact by focusing on building technology that could be used by the provider-side, instead of targeting individual patients.

What are the outcome measurements you are most interested in?

MedPilot is focused on three main goals: increasing revenue, decreasing administrative costs, and improving patient satisfaction.

We plan to accomplish these goals in two ways. First, we look at demographics and user behavior to better tailor billing communications and boost patient engagement. Second, we utilize our patient-friendly technology to get at the real root of why people can’t pay their bills. We help them overcome these problems by providing personalized messaging, clarity, and financial solutions.

Can you discuss what offerings you have for cardiologists or other clinicians/trainees involved in cardiovascular medicine?

Many medical practices have similar issues with patient collections, but cardiovascular offices see these issues magnified by their relatively large billing items and a mixture of procedural and consultative charges. Our technology gives cardiology practices the ability to streamline patient engagement and increase collections, while allowing more efficient use of their office and billing personnel.

Although our client is the provider, our product is also geared towards helping the patient. With the increase of high deductible health plans, patients are increasingly facing the burden of these large bills. Our software offers a tech-forward approach to help the patient truly understand and pay for their bills with customizable payment options.

Where do you see MedPilot in 1 year? 5 years?

We see health care going through many changes over the next 5 years, especially with the constant improvement and use of health care-focused technologies. Practice management systems and electronic health records constantly evolve, and many new companies look to improve on the current health care system.  While we focus on and expand our own areas of expertise, we also aim to offer greater value by integrating and complementing other health care financial technologies as they emerge.

Over the next 5 years, we hope to see a whole range of revenue cycle software systems incorporate our functionality in order to help patients understand and pay their medical bills more efficiently.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Our team includes a balance of health care finance, technology, and communications experts, so that we can bring innovative ideas to improve patient collections, while reducing the stress and frustration that so many consumers experience. Using our expertise in direct marketing, software development, integration, and revenue cycle management, we have the skills to tackle this growing issue.

Keywords: CardioSource WorldNews, Deductibles and Coinsurance, Health Care Costs, Patient Care, Patient Satisfaction

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