Contact: Bonnie Shaw
Clearpoint Agency
(858) 724-2500
Bonnie@clearpointagency.com

For Immediate Release

CHILDREN’S SPECIALISTS OF SAN DIEGO IMPLEMENTS HERAE PAPERLESS PAYMENT PROCESSING FOR PATIENTS COVERED BY AETNA

– New electronic system expected to reduce costs by more than $4,400 per week –

San Diego - August 1, 2005 - HERAE, LLC, a new business process management and Web services provider for the healthcare industry, today announced that Children’s Specialists of San Diego has implemented complete paperless processing of electronic remittance advice for patients covered by Aetna using HERAE’s Web-based, HIPAA compliant, patent-pending process.

HERAE is moving information associated with healthcare claim payments between Children’s Specialists of San Diego and Aetna, electronically. The consistent paperless process transforms the HIPAA 835 transaction into standardized virtual remittance forms. The result is simpler and faster processing, the elimination of paper envelopes, checks and explanation of benefit (EOB) forms, and an expected overall savings of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of staff time for the two companies.

Children’s Specialists says that the HERAE implementation, as well as the connection with Aetna, was problem free. It has already seen its average cash posting processing time of five minutes per EOB cut to 30 seconds, and anticipates that it will save more than $4,400 per week using HERAE once it is processing every EOB from every payer using HERAE.

“Payment processing is one of the most time-consuming staff functions at Children’s Specialists. Now with literally a click of a mouse, our staff can process and route payment work, track an EOB or produce a report that with paper would have taken many man hours,” said Larry Silvia, CEO of Children’s Specialists of San Diego. “Our goals are to reduce staff time spent on manual tasks such as copying, filing and tracking EOBs, and to free up the valuable time we need to better serve the physicians in our group and expand our business. HERAE is helping us to accomplish those goals. ”

HERAE’s process provides tools that enhance the familiar workflow activities at Children’s Specialists. HERAE’s offerings are all thin client, ASP-based, requiring its clients to have nothing more than a browser. For cash posting activities, HERAE’s browser tiling software, ViewPoint, is installed on the local PC. When the transactions are completed, the data is conveniently stored in a database called the Electronic File Cabinet™.

“Children’s Specialists sees the value that comes with a completely electronic payment process,” said HERAE Executive Vice President Jim Ribelin. “The professionals at this physician operation are reaping significant savings in time and other resources because they no longer have to deal with paper payment documents. Children’s was also able to avoid the installation of a costly scanning solution that does nothing more than capture paper. HERAE recognizes this as a significant trend in the healthcare industry. As both payers and providers continue to search for ways to save time and money, and improve the claims payment system, HERAE’s completely electronic process will be the premier, end-to-end, paperless solution.”

HERAE’s research identifies the average cost to a physician’s office for traditional, manual processing of each payment envelope at $9.20. This means physician offices spend as much as $5.5 billion a year to manually process claim payments. In addition, at an average cost of $0.42 per envelope, payers spend another $252 million a year to issue the payments by mail. HERAE’s electronic processing solutions are expected to reduce operation and transaction costs for providers by as much as two-thirds and for healthcare payers by as much as 50 percent .

HERAE’s offerings require no change in a provider’s existing practice management or billing software. However, the HERAE solution supports provider offices where their practice management system can upload an electronic remittance directly. In such cases, HERAE’s unique Web presentation tool can handle exceptions that don’t process automatically. The same tool gives providers robust reporting capabilities and streamlines the processing of payment exceptions, payment appeals, refunds and coordination of benefits.

About Children’s Specialists of San Diego

For more than 25 years Children's Specialists of San Diego has focused on the healthcare needs of children. As San Diego's largest pediatric specialty medical group, Children's Specialists has more than 150 pediatric, adolescent, and maternal/fetal medicine specialists who provide a full spectrum of outpatient and inpatient care in 27 specialties. All physicians have completed specialized training in their respective fields and are Board Certified or Board Eligible in their specialties. Children’s Specialists of San Diego is committed and dedicated to providing excellent care to children. On the Net: http://childrensspecialists.com/.

About HERAE, LLC

A privately owned limited liability corporation based in San Diego, California, HERAE provides painless payment processing for the healthcare industry. Through its unique focus on healthcare provider billing challenges and electronic remittance advice, HERAE has developed a paperless process with standardized explanation of benefits (EOB) forms, detailed reporting and process workflow enhancement capabilities that improve collections, reduce costs by up to two-thirds, and complete the payment to deposit cycle in 24-48 hours. On the Net: www.herae.com or call 888-41-HERAE (888-414-3723).

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