ZirMed Announces Expansion of Industry Leading Patient Payment Financial Suite

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- ZirMed, a leading provider of revenue cycle management solutions for healthcare providers, today announced the release of the ZirMed Patient Payment Developer Kit, a new partner integration toolkit allowing provider and software vendors to seamlessly leverage ZirMed's Online Bill Pay, Virtual Terminal, and payment processing services.

Changes in insurance coverage such as high deductible plans, healthcare savings accounts, and increasing co-pay and co-insurance rates, have resulted in patients being directly responsible for more of their healthcare expenses than ever before.  At the same time, the shift towards consumer driven healthcare has set patient expectations that paying for healthcare services should be just like paying other service providers and retail merchants.  These trends have combined to create an industry-wide need to seamlessly provide patients highly efficient, highly secure, easy-to-use payment options from within existing software, websites or physical locations.

To meet this need, ZirMed created the industry's first toolkit designed specifically for provider organizations and software vendors to seamlessly and easily integrate PCI compliant and user tested payment technology with their existing software applications and websites. By using the toolkit's "plug and play" design, providers and software vendors can offer a variety of payment solutions quickly, securely and in compliance with all regulatory guidelines.  This toolkit builds upon payment functionality that ZirMed provides to the provider market including:

• Online bill payment
• Virtual terminals for ACH and credit card processing
• Recurring payment plans
• Patient's online bill presentation
• e-cashiering, collecting and tracking cash
• Patient Lockbox
• Patient credit card tokenization

"ZirMed is proud to expand our functionality, thus making available to our partners and providers the same payment processing technology that has successfully provided consumer portal bill paying and statement e-delivery.  Today, we directly process over three-million transactions each month," said Tom Butts, CEO of ZirMed.  "The cost, technology and compliance barriers have prevented more than 70% of hospitals and physician offices from adopting these types of solutions.  With our patient payment developer kit, these organizations can provide critical functionality from within their existing technology footprint and have the peace of mind that it will be easy to implement, easy to maintain, and easy to use for their patients."

The ZirMed Patient Payment Developer kit contains nine different APIs, which providers and software vendors can embed within their current websites and applications.  By utilizing these RESTful based calls, developers can provide industry leading functionality from within their existing user experiences.  While standard in many industries, this is the first time such a developer toolkit has empowered payment processing within the healthcare industry.

"The ZirMed Patient Payment Kit allows provider organizations to verify a patient's eligibility, collect the co-pay, and auto-post the payment to the patient's account all within their HIS, PM, or external web portal," noted Butts.

The ZirMed Virtual Terminal and Online Bill Payment Solutions help providers to collect the patient liability, provide multiple payment options, enable internal controls – enabling providers to collect ACH, credit cards, FSA, H.S.A. and credit card tokens for payment plans and credit cards on file all while complying with stringent PCI compliance guidelines.  Providers are able to collect patient portions easier, faster, and with the proper controls and reporting in place. Consumers are able to log in and view their statement across a healthcare enterprise, pay their bill via ACH or credit cards, and even schedule payments if the provider allows.

"Our providers experience increased collection rates, improved staff productivity, reduced expenses, and improved internal controls and record keeping accuracy," said Butts. "As an additional meaningful bonus, our providers and partners often experience a 10-20% discount on credit card processing rates."

The ZirMed Patient Payment Developer Kit will be available immediately to interested provider organizations and software vendors.  

ZirMed will be further discussing the new kit at the national Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) show in Las Vegas from October 23-26, 2011, where ZirMed is exhibiting at booth #635.

About ZirMed:

ZirMed is a nationally recognized leader in delivering revenue cycle management solutions to healthcare providers, serving more than 100,000 healthcare providers.  ZirMed leverages the power of technology to cure administrative burdens and increase cash flow, enabling providers to not just survive but thrive.  ZirMed solutions include eligibility verification, credit/debit card processing, check processing, claims management, coding compliancy and reimbursement management, electronic remittance advice, patient statements, patient e-commerce solutions, and lock box services.  ZirMed is a member of Inc. magazine's 500/5000 fastest growing companies and Healthcare Informatics magazine's Top 100 companies.  For more information about ZirMed visit www.zirmed.com

SOURCE ZirMed