Interswitch Transnational, Africa’s leading digital payments and commerce provider is set to spark off transformation of Nigeria’s health sector with the launch of Interswitch Hospital Management Solutions (IHMS), a shared outsourcing infrastructure to help manage non-core functions such as patient record keeping, Claims Management and other administrative services.
The solution enables Care Providers to focus on their most essential services without being burdened by time-consuming data management tasks, giving them the ability to pay added attention to keeping their patients healthy.
It changes the way Clinicians, Doctors and other medical professionals manage patient information from registration to payment. Other services offered as part of the solution include Claims Processing, Integrated Payments and Reporting, Claims Dispute Arbitration and Settlement, Biometric Patient Identification at hospitals, Capitation Payments Tracking, seamless Patient Eligibility Management and secure patient data hosting and mining with global standards.
Speaking about the benefits offered by IHMS, DCEO Industry Vertical Markets, Interswitch, Chinyere Don-Okhuofu commented, “Healthcare in Nigeria is plagued by severe challenges from lack of adequate technology infrastructure and high operational costs to manual submission and processing of health claims. As it currently stands, Healthcare Providers and Insurers simply do not have the capacity to manage all of these non-core functions, while still giving their patients the proper care they need.
Interswitch Health Management Solution has been developed to address this issue. Patient processing in health facilities is well integrated from front desk to nursing, doctors to diagnostics, inventory to billing, allowing medical entrepreneurs track cost and revenue in real-time.
Patients will enjoy seamless access to quality healthcare and the multiple functionality of their cards, which include care, payments and savings.
With IHMS, Regulators also have access to quality information for policy making, reduced industry fraud rates, effective government interventions and centralized electronic medical records”.
Health Providers registered on the platform will have their patient records transferred and hosted on a secure server, which allows the flexibility of using World Health Organisation’s ICD 9 or 10 coding. Patients visiting the hospital for treatment may opt to be issued a Chip and PIN-based card used for identification, storing medical history and payments for medical services.
The solution makes it possible to submit claims or bills to the HMO and track payment easily after service has been delivered.
Chinyere went further to explain the benefit to Health Insurers saying;
“The several benefits of IHMS to Health Insurers include reduced fraudulent claims, efficient revenue collection & expense management, improved patient satisfaction, streamlined and standardized operations, improved resource planning & allocation and market share growth due to outsourcing of non-core operations. Hospitals also enjoy quick Claims submission process and timely Claims settlement.”
It can be recalled that recently, Interswitch launched Card Transaction Control, which allows Nigerians to take control of their transaction security.
IHMS is another step by the brand that further reinstates its position as a market leader with the interest of Nigerians at heart.