Medical Lockboxes 101: How Lockbox Payment Processing Benefits Payers and Providers

The term “Lockbox” inherently drums up images of a physical and secure object, perhaps a steel container with a lock stored somewhere safe that can only be accessed by those who hold the key. While traditional lockboxes may not have always looked exactly like the above description, this is the sole purpose they served. 

A lockbox was a secure intermediary stop for businesses, provided by banks. If you owed a company money, you would send your payment to a lockbox controlled by that company’s bank. The bank would count up the receipts sent to the box and subsequently deposit the corresponding money into the company’s bank account. 

Lockboxes have evolved from their original service to include managing electronic files. Today’s medical lockboxes help Payers and Providers enhance the revenue cycle management (RCM) process with improved processing efficiency, increased automation, and faster processing times.

Get To Know The Modern Medical Lockbox

Today, lockboxes work in a similar fashion. However, they have the ability to reconcile a drastically larger and more complex amount of information. 

Medical lockboxes are one-stop-shops that allow payments to be managed, both collections and deposits, allowing an organization to meet deadlines, streamline the payment and reconciliation process, and improve organizational efficiencies. 

These benefits allow CFOs and other executives to experience a more accurate revenue cycle through predictable payments and decreased overhead. 

With 20+ years of experience in the healthcare industry, Smart Data Solutions (SDS) has a unique understanding of the requirements both Payers and Providers face for turnaround times, document management, and healthcare correspondence. SDS’ proprietary machine learning technology can standardize your workflow and ultimately create efficiencies through lockbox payment, no matter the input — ACH, ERA, EHR, paper files, checks, or card payment.

We can utilize any standard file format for processing any kind of document, regardless of the paper or electronic format. Using a lockbox solution means all of your processing data will be centrally stored, alleviating lost hours spent hunting down specific records stored on disparate servers.

SDS is HITRUST certified, HIPAA compliant, and has two highly secure tier IV data centers, in addition to biometric security and video surveillance. Partnering with SDS for medical lockbox services means you can rest assured that the data, while centralized, is completely secure. 

Make the Move to Medical Lockbox Payment Processing

With SDS lockbox services, payment processing is a breeze. We work directly with your bank so that your organization sees payment reconciliation sooner and more consistently. This can lead to benefits such as better RCM, superior revenue forecasting, and overall better organizational planning.

Benefits of Lockbox Payment Processing

1. Increased Accuracy: The use of automation ensures incoming records are processed accurately and efficiently. 
2. Reduction in Manual Intervention: With medical lockboxes, internal technical talent will spend less time maintaining operations, and more time moving the needle on strategic initiatives.
3. Faster Turnaround Times: Using a lockbox solution aided by automation and machine learning means documents are processed faster and routed onto their next steps. This leads to better relationships among partners and faster payment times. 
4. Expense Reduction: In addition to fewer headaches overall, Payers and Providers experience lower processing costs when manual or in-house processes become automated.

Medical lockbox payment processing is an easy win for Payers and Providers who want to simplify their RCM. At SDS, we’ve used our experience to create mailroom solutions that address any instance of proprietary lockbox structure and needs. Learn more about our Revenue Cycle Management services and request a consultation to modernize your revenue correspondence.