HME software company Brightree LLC has acquired Strategic AR Solutions LLC, a provider of private-payor billing and collection solutions and services. Under the terms of the agreement, Strategic AR will operate as a separate business entity and will continue to be led by Kevin Winkley, the company’s founder and CEO.
Strategic AR employs various communications methods, such as mail, interactive voice response and online methods to engage patients at the right time to collect payments faster. When integrated with the billing system of record, providers can further automate business processes and reduce the amount of time and effort associated with patient collections.
With this agreement, Strategic AR will continue to provide leading technology solutions and enhancements to its industry-leading platform that benefit customers of all major home medical equipment (HME) billing systems. For Brightree® customers, additional integration, such as the automatic posting of payments back into the billing system, will be made available.
The leaders of both companies agreed the acquisition made sense for both firms:
“In the past, many homecare providers have chosen not to pursue the patient portion of an order due to the manual-intensive business processes required to collect the amount owed,” said Dave Cormack, president and CEO of Brightree. “With greater adoption of high deductible plans and an increase in private pay patients, we believe patient collections must become a critical component to every HME provider’s success in 2014. Based on these changing dynamics and increased demand from our customer base for a more tightly integrated payment solution, it made perfect sense for us to forge this deeper relationship with Strategic AR.”
“Payment practices in the healthcare industry have changed dramatically during the past several years, and it is now more acceptable for HME providers to ask for the patient co-pay upfront and to have a patient’s credit card on file for re-orders,” Winkley said. “We felt it was the right time to align ourselves more closely with Brightree as the dominant software vendor in the HME industry, and we look forward to continuing to deliver first-class solutions and customer service to all of our customers regardless of their billing system.”
Strategic AR advises that its current customers should continue to contact their existing customer support representatives. For more information about Strategic AR, visit http://www.strategicar.com.