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Automatic Patient Billing Market to Reach $2.18B by 2018

By Ryan Mcaskill

New health care technology is pushing automated billing growth at a 7.2 percent CAGR over the next five years.

- One of the hottest trends in health care information technology is the use of automated billing solutions. With the penetration of electronic health records growing and provisions of the Affordable Care Act pushing value-based systems, the ability to automate becomes more critical. One of the biggest challenges hospitals, practitioners and payers face when moving away from fee-for-service platforms, is handling the increased workflow and data that is needed for the focus on value and without automation, it can be difficult to overcome.

Micromarket Monitor released the results of a study of the North American automatic patient billing marketplace. It estimates that the industry will grow to around $2.182 billion by 2018. That will require a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2 percent from 2013 through 2018. The North American automatic patient billing market also represents 58.9 percent of the global marketplace and is projected to grow to 59.9 percent by 2018.

The report examines the market in several segments including hardware, software and services.

Automatic patient billing systems are used to generate automated responded for events such as claim denials, re-submissions and status updates. These are used to streamline back-office workflow, which in turn allows for more complete claim tracking.

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  • “The automatic medical billing software for the healthcare sector has proved to be an efficient and effective tool to curb the rising healthcare costs,” the report reads. “The department-wide data is integrated from the provider and payer, and the system also processes medical claims in a more secured way, reducing errors and chances of fraud.”

    In the North American market, payers spend 30 percent of their income on administrative costs due to manual processes. More health care providers are under pressure to customize services, which an automated system would play a big part of. Process digitization is expected to improve the return on investment of health care providers like hospitals and clinicians by reducing costs and overheads as well as by reducing the time period involved in pre-admission and billing procedures. Consequently, the health care market as a whole has succeeded with improved operational performance and cost-effective measures.

    This is similar to trends that are being seen all across the globe. In the European version of the study, the market is predicted to increase to $827 million by the end of 2018. Currently, it hovers at $610 million. That is an CAGR of 6.3 percent over a five year span. The European market will represent 22.7 percent  of the entire global market by 2018. It currently sits at 23.3 percent. The Asian market, will see the same CAGR of 7.2 percent over the next five years, increasing to $463.9 million by 2018.