Inbox Health Selects CheckAlt to Streamline Check Payments with Innovative Lockbox Solution
Written by Tiffany Rider
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – May 31, 2019 — In creating a new trajectory of growth for its already successful business, Inbox Health, an innovative leader in patient communications and payments for medical billers, has partnered with CheckAlt to develop a solution for accepting and processing check payments.
In its modernization of the patient billing experience, the New Haven, CT based startup has accelerated and streamlined credit card payments to their medical billers and, in turn, their provider customers. But a large number of patients need to pay by check, and collecting paper check payments was inefficient for their customers. It’s particularly challenging for third-party billers to manage their paper mail efficiently, and that’s something Inbox Health wanted to solve for. CEO Blake Walker knew that they would need a strong partner who could provide innovative lockbox management with the flexibility to meet their quickly growing company’s needs.
“There’s a big need in healthcare for managing paper payments,” Walker said, noting that the more than $180 billion healthcare payments transacted between patients and providers in 2019 will be done primarily by check. “Our system is obviously designed to minimize paper usage, but there’s still a large percentage of people who need to pay by check. We knew that we needed an entrepreneurial, innovative lockbox vendor with a broad geographic footprint to help us solve this paper challenge.”
Unlike card payments that are set up and collected virtually, check payments require manual labor and physical capture from potentially disparate geographic locations. Inbox Health must be able to send payments to hundreds of bank accounts associated with the underlying providers (e.g. doctors) who needed to be paid.
CheckAlt recognized this was not going to work with the traditional lockbox approach of moving funds through image cash letters (ICLs) simply because most providers are not going to be able to set up ICLs with a wide array of smaller banks. Rather than allowing themselves to be constrained by the structural limitations of ICL technology, the CheckAlt team took a fresh look at the challenge and thought through how they could move funds to a disparate universe of providers using their existing infrastructure.
“Initially I’ll admit that we were too caught up trying to leverage ICLs as the prevailing technology,” said Rob Snyder, Managing Director of Sales and Relationship Management at CheckAlt. “It was only after we brainstormed as a team with our CEO Shai Stern that we came up with a solution that combined ACH disbursement and ICL that we were able to deliver on the solution Inbox Health needed.”
With the solution set up, CheckAlt was able to have Inbox Health up and running in a couple of weeks. Walker and team were now able to capture the full ecosystem of payments that were coming into their billers at a reasonable cost—something that would have been impossible with a traditional ICL lockbox solution.
“CheckAlt’s definitely the right partner for us for a lot of reasons,” Walker said. “We were trying to do something different, and most vendors weren’t up to the task. The lockbox solution that we’ve created together is really compelling in terms of how it improves how third-party billing companies are able to manage paper mail. CheckAlt’s flexibility, innovative thinking, and incredible team made them the right partner for us.”
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About Inbox Health
Inbox Health is transforming medical billing, one patient at a time, with personalized and intelligent patient interactions that deliver a clear and convenient billing experience for every person. Founded in 2014, Inbox Health is quickly becoming the industry standard for medical billers that want to improve patient satisfaction with their billing process, increase collections and reduce administrative costs. The Inbox Health platform automates the patient communication process using bi-directional correspondence, proprietary algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence so every patient understands their medical bills and has access to different payment mechanisms. Learn more at InboxHealth.com.
About CheckAlt
In the past 10 years, CheckAlt has become the leading provider of check payment processing solutions for hundreds of financial institutions across the country. As both bank agnostic and demographic agnostic, CheckAlt is uniquely positioned for payments convergence. It has been our focus to process check payments while also eliminating paper from the system with robust electronic payment APIs. CheckAlt’s solutions include lockbox processing across a nationwide hub-and-spoke network of processing sites, consolidated item processing, integrated treasury solutions, and mobile capture services. CheckAlt is headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif.
For interviews, please contact CheckAlt’s Head of Communications Tiffany Rider at trider@checkalt.com.
