Josh Fertel
00:04
Welcome to the Angry Biller, a show where we explore the people and the businesses behind the scenes of healthcare, those men and women that are the catalysts that allow providers to concentrate on delivering exceptional patient care.
00:16
Welcome to the Angry Biller. My name is Josh Fertel, I'm the owner of J3 Medical Billing and I am your host. There is nothing that upsets me more, for the practices that we have as clients is that when they're not collecting from their patients whether it's the deductible, whether it's their co-pay patients know they have to pay, they know they have a deductible, and when they come to the office, they know they have to come up with something. Yet doctors are afraid, offices are afraid to collect it. So then it becomes the responsibility of a billing company to go after those patients and send them statements and try to collect after, and anybody knows that trying to collect after is not going to be as successful as collecting up front. So the best thing is to have a good system in place and with that, we're very excited to have Amy Crawford with LQPay, with us today to talk about how they help providers in the collection process. Welcome, amy.
Amy Crawford
01:15
Thank you, Josh, so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. This is really fun. We're glad that you're here.
Josh Fertel
01:22
But let's start at the beginning. Tell us about you, how your background, how you got into with LQPay.
Amy Crawford
01:29
Yeah well, perhaps like a lot of professionals at our wise age, we had a little bit of a zigzaggy road. I would say.
Josh Fertel
01:37
We all did.
Amy Crawford
01:38
Right, but actually by education. Early on I had a labor and employment background, human resources et cetera, and then I would say it always had an affinity for technology. I was connected with a particular healthcare technology firm that I really became, you know, entrenched with and learned the ins and outs of, you know aspects of the industry. That company was actually a clinical documentation system, a full, you know EMR, electronic medical record, you know EHR. So, and targeting hospitals and specifically hospital emergency departments.
Josh Fertel
02:27
Wow.
Amy Crawford
02:31
So that solution was amazing the company was repositioned and the assets were sold, but that gave me an entree into my current role at LQPay, and so I teamed up with the founder of LQPay, shashi Kapoor, and a small team of us, and Shashi had actually just sold his prior company to MasterCard in 2015, and wanted to continue in FinTech and payments, but do it in healthcare, and so you know where I was connected with Shashi through our outside general counsel, who we knew in common. I kind of brought the health care aspects, the technology, which obviously we shared Right, and then dove right into the deep end of payments and the financial aspects.
03:30
The most important part, the most important part, the most important part, the most important part, and you know, when you opened, you so rightly framed it from the provider perspective of collections.
Josh Fertel
03:43
Yes.
Amy Crawford
03:44
And I think as patients we can all also relate to a good or bad payment experience as well.
Josh Fertel
03:54
Exactly.
Amy Crawford
03:55
So yeah, so anyway, that's sort of the short, very short version of how you know I ended up here at El Coupe and your position at El Coupe so I'm executive vice president there and again was one of the original small group of team members who got the company going. And so you know, fast forward. Today we're super excited about the growth that we've had and look forward to more to come.
Josh Fertel
04:22
And you are a nationwide organization.
Amy Crawford
04:31
We are a nationwide organization From a customer perspective, we service. We service today more so the SMB space. So the small to midsize healthcare market that would include dental, all types of verticals within the dental space, healthcare, various specialties, smaller rural hospitals, multi-specialty groups, clinics so really it's a big market.
Josh Fertel
05:04
It's so important. What you're doing is, you know, a lot of people from the outside don't understand that a medical office is a business, exactly, and even providers. You know, and I've said this before they're not taught how to run a business. Unfortunately, they're taught to heal people. My perspective is my job and people like you and me and everybody else that are behind the scenes. It's our responsibility to make sure that doctors are concentrating on patient care and let us worry about the rest.
Amy Crawford
05:29
Absolutely. Yeah, I know we always say they didn't quite have those business courses as part of the medical school curriculum and, depending on which direction providers go, they need that, maybe more or less, but certainly when they get into private practice it becomes so, so important and you're right, that's why they have partners like us to help them.
Josh Fertel
05:50
So an overview, and then we'll dive a little deeper. Tell us what LQPay would do.
Amy Crawford
05:55
Absolutely so. Lqpay is an omni-channel patient payments solution.
Josh Fertel
06:01
Omni-channel meaning.
Amy Crawford
06:03
An omni-channel, meaning we can pretty much facilitate or help with the collection of patient payments any which way you can think of. So that would include in-office payments, so through point-of-sale, actual card readers, point-of-sale devices, as well as a whole host of what we would call card not present or remote payment options, things like text-to-pay, automatic recurring payment plans, hosted online payments pages, et cetera.
Josh Fertel
06:35
Yes.
Amy Crawford
06:36
And we can get into some of those areas with a bit more specificity. But really, what really differentiates LQPay? And rounds out. Our solution is our automation technology and our robotics technology. So tell us about that while we mentioned it, so we have an in-house robotics technology. So tell us about that. While we mentioned it, so we have an in-house robotics team. And just to take a step back, there are, as you well know, hundreds of thousands of different practice management systems.
Josh Fertel
07:05
There are many, many, many, EMR, EHRs, you name it. Yes.
Amy Crawford
07:09
And many of them have embedded proprietary card processing options.
Josh Fertel
07:16
Correct, yes.
Amy Crawford
07:18
Oftentimes the functionality of those embedded processing solutions are limited, Okay, but yet those systems don't necessarily open up and allow direct integration with just any payments firm.
Josh Fertel
07:34
Okay.
Amy Crawford
07:34
Because of course, they have a commercial relationship with their processor.
07:38
There's a revenue stream, and that's fine. So we can certainly do direct API integrations. We are, after all, a software company, right? However, what really gave birth, if you will, to the automation technology is that we were running up against those brick walls with those systems that would not allow integration, so we came about it in a different way. So what the robotics and automation does in its basic form is, anytime payments are processed anywhere on our platform, whether that is in the office, through a text-to-pay online payment, our bot, if you will, picks up that payment and in that moment, upon approval, in real time, post it back in to the underlying patient management system, so that a provider or healthcare group doesn't have to necessarily be captive to the processing options available within their patient management platform or practice management system. They can come out of that and have superior functionality, but yet still have payments integrated patient payments integrated back in through automation.
Josh Fertel
08:50
I think a lot of times from the outside they don't understand how important that integration is. We'll have practices that use Square or we'll have practices that were zelled money and it gets lost. We don't know who is it supposed to go, unless the provider is telling us we collected this. We have no way of finding it, and then the worst part is we'll send the customer a statement and they've already paid. Now you have an unhappy customer, an unhappy patient.
Amy Crawford
09:16
Absolutely, absolutely. And we also see practices who might have these standalone solutions and they're posting payments manually, where they're paying staff overtime because, at the end of the day, they're trying to reconcile their day, and so there's frustrated staff members, there's, you know, labor costs and expense, and so really, these are the real problems that we're solving for, and you know, you mentioned one other thing earlier that I didn't want to let slip my mind, which is the patient experience, want to let slip my mind which is the patient experience and also, from your perspective, in terms of billing services, the balance that you strike of ensuring reimbursements are optimized from the carrier side, but also chasing those patient payments.
Josh Fertel
10:08
Yes.
Amy Crawford
10:08
Right.
Josh Fertel
10:09
That's going to be normally 25% of the visit.
Amy Crawford
10:14
Right, and so things like very simple technologies that have been embraced more fully in other industries, like card on file, right, yes, on the scene in, you know, 2000, whatever, 16, 17. And we spoke to provider groups. They're like, oh goodness, keeping a card on file and charging my patient with that card? I don't, I don't think I could do that, and you know that patient reluctance fast forward now you know post pandemic, all that. The adoption of things like card on file, text-to-pay, it's not only a standard but it's what patients expect as well. So I mention that only because, from a billing company perspective, it allows you to really focus on those insurance dollars and, in tandem with the provider practice, giving them tools through a solution like ours, you know, to better focus on the patient.
Josh Fertel
11:18
The integration makes everybody's life easier and it streamlines everything. It just makes everything easier and, yes, it does create a better for the patients. You know it's a better experience for the patients.
Amy Crawford
11:29
It's a yes, there's yeah, so there's a little.
Josh Fertel
11:31
They know they're not, you're not sending them, you're not telling them something they don't know. They know that they have a deductible or a copay.
Amy Crawford
11:38
They know that they do, and we all know that the easier it is for you to pay, the more likely you will pay, and you will pay sooner.
Josh Fertel
11:51
Do you find that patients pay more on the text or through an email?
Amy Crawford
11:58
It's a great question and there again, I think, when we first were deploying our technology, we only had text. That's what we led with mobile numbers, and we would often get this question oh gosh, can we use email instead?
Josh Fertel
12:12
Right.
Amy Crawford
12:13
So of course we incorporated email, but these days we always say lead with mobile, because that's what we all pay attention to now, right, emails get buried. And the other interesting thing that we encountered was particularly when you get into physical rehabilitation practices or even practices down here in South Florida, where the demographics might be a slightly older population.
Josh Fertel
12:35
Yes, for sure.
Amy Crawford
12:36
There was concern from some provider groups about oh gosh, will they be able to pay by text? But let me tell you, those folks are communicating with children and grandchildren. They know how to text.
Josh Fertel
12:48
They do.
Amy Crawford
12:49
So we do see much quicker payment when patients are able to pay via text.
Josh Fertel
12:55
One of our practices is very skewed older, a lot of Medicare patients and they still like the mail. Some of them still like getting the bill in the mail but it's not cost effective to do that, obviously. But I'm getting to that point where I'm going to be on Medicare in a few years.
Amy Crawford
13:11
No, no way I'm technologically savvy.
Josh Fertel
13:14
So, yes, I think within the next few years, mail has to go. Point, we're all going to be on Medicare in a few years. No, no way Technologically savvy. So, yes, I think, within the next few years, mail has to go away. I mean, as far as mailing out bills, it's just an expense that's not needed.
Amy Crawford
13:23
And think about it. You put a statement in the mail. You're paying for the printer, the postage it gets to the patient. And then they're like what do I do with this? Who has checks anymore? I mean, some people do, but I can tell you that the youth out there, like my children. They don't know what a check is. And then for security reasons, patients are very reluctant to use the little stubs on the statements to actually write out their credit card information and put that in the mail right so then it sits, and some of these statements could be for even little dollars yes and yet, and they're sitting on the countertop for months at a time.
14:08
So then what happens? You have to send another statement, and another statement or a phone call, so that's-.
Josh Fertel
14:15
It costs more than to collect.
Amy Crawford
14:17
And it's frustrating for the patient because they want to pay in most cases. Yes, you know so-.
Josh Fertel
14:23
Let's talk about compliance. Let's talk about HIPAA and let's talk about compliance, all right.
Amy Crawford
14:26
You have to.
Josh Fertel
14:29
No, I'm kidding you know Ligwood has obviously has, you know, the ability to have everybody's personal information. How do you protect it? What are your standards, your firewalls?
Amy Crawford
14:44
No, it's a great question. Obviously I don't mean to make light of it because you know, as a healthcare payments company, fintech I mean company fintech, I mean security is in our DNA, I mean it's just who we are, we have to be. And of course, you know we have our own internal security protocols, led by our CISO, our chief information security officer. But, more specifically, I'll take that in a couple parts. One is that our company LQPay. We are truly the technology layer, if you will. We are the UX, user interface, ui. We are enabling all this feature, functionality. And then our platform is integrated with most of the major merchant processors.
15:31
Okay, so your Global Payments, heartland, fiserv, for example, elevon, which is a US bank company, tesis, etc. So the actual merchant processors. And the reason I say that is because each one of those integrations required certification. Okay, and not just on the payments functionality but on the compliance aspects. And in the card business, you have the PCI compliance Right. So the way we designed our integration is such that on the LQPay side, we are never storing or passing card data in the clear.
16:10
Okay we are never storing or passing card data in the clear. As soon as we basically take a payment, there's a technology handoff to the processor and then everything's encrypted. So when cards are on file they're vaulted at that processor level. So even our team doesn't see full card data. So that's on the card side. When it comes to the patient side, where perhaps that particular provider is using our robotics technology, then absolutely we are HIPAA compliant. We have business associate agreements that we will sign. We have trainings each year, you know, each year we only when we achieve, you know, gain access to a particular provider system. We always want them to limit our access to that system. That's great.
16:57
Right To what we need to see to do the job for them. So, yes, we have. There's also, some of our larger customers are obviously more compliance sensitive. So even in the text messaging we have configurable messaging so we can address specific compliance statements that they may want to communicate to their customers.
Josh Fertel
17:25
Oh, you said something and maybe I want to make sure I understood this Credit card merchant processors you integrate with other merchant processors. So if there's a practice that's just totally in love with the processors that they use now, they don't have to switch.
Amy Crawford
17:41
That's right, assuming it's a processor that we can integrate with.
Josh Fertel
17:45
And it sounds like you have all the major ones.
Amy Crawford
17:47
That's right, we absolutely can. They might have to swap out equipment, which we can always work with them to do. I think they'll actually enjoy the change. The terminals at the office that we deploy on are very modern. They're Wi-Fi, wireless. They don't need to be tethered with cables to the desktops. They support Google Pay, apple Pay, tap to Pay all of those you know modern payment features.
Josh Fertel
18:14
What do you think the next steps are in your company as far as technology, or where do you think it's going to go? What other avenues are there that you haven't tapped into yet?
Amy Crawford
18:24
Gosh, josh, we have a product roadmap I feel like is a mile long.
Josh Fertel
18:29
Are you?
Amy Crawford
18:29
allowed to talk about it. Yeah, yes, we have so many things in the immediate future that we have we actually do releases fairly often. We also say that we have developed our solution and continue to do so in the market, and so constantly customers are saying, oh wow, I wish I could do this or that, or wouldn't it be great? Do you have an example? Yeah, so one would be from a report, from our transaction report, charging a card on file right from a transaction report as opposed to having to go in to the specific patient record. We enabled that. We recently have some folks that have requested the ability to adjust a payment transaction same day before settlement. So this is popular in like telemed, where you ask for a card and run, let's say, a $50 transaction in order for the person to schedule the appointment Correct, and then maybe they're a no-show and you had a $15 cancellation same day.
Josh Fertel
19:36
Yes.
Amy Crawford
19:36
You can adjust it very easily. I mean, these are simple things, but just things that we listen to and embrace all the time.
Josh Fertel
19:46
I like that last one. It's close. Tell them it is still a thing.
Amy Crawford
19:53
It is kind of going away a little bit, but it is still important. Well, also in pediatrics, especially for acute situations or when someone's very sick and it's hard for a parent to physically maybe bring a child in.
Josh Fertel
20:06
Right.
Amy Crawford
20:08
Or we're all more conscientious now of trying to prevent spreading, you know, germs.
Josh Fertel
20:13
Yes, yes.
Amy Crawford
20:13
So it is popular still in many you know disciplines. Oh no, no, for sure it's not going away.
20:19
Yeah, but I did want it to beyond those. I would call them small tweaks and enhancements. Some of the other I would say larger rocks, if you will that we want to move forward on. So right now we have the ability for customers to send out e-statements there's summary statements electronically in bulk fashion. They can do that. They can also send text to Pays in Bulk. However, we want the ability to be able to render the full statements, very detailed statements to the patients, detailed statement to the patients and recently, as I'm sure most of the folks watching, this know, there's been some hacks going on out there with some very large companies that really stunted the provider's ability to get statements out and therefore collect.
Josh Fertel
21:13
It absolutely was a disaster. It was a disaster Still going through, Still going through.
Amy Crawford
21:16
So while providers did lean on us using our text to pay and so forth, this issue of like gosh, if you all could render the full statement, we would almost be able to use your service exclusively, because it would prevent the calls into the office like oh, what's this payment request for Kind?
Josh Fertel
21:34
of. Thing.
Amy Crawford
21:34
Give the patient more detail.
Josh Fertel
21:37
That's always an issue. When you have a statement you owe this, but we don't have an explanation why, and we get a million phone calls that are due that and we explain and most of the time it's okay, but that's just time. That's being used in an office that you can't get back you can't get back.
Amy Crawford
21:55
And then also again the cashflow and supporting the AR cycles. The other thing would be patient intake forms on the front end, credentialing and tying those into payments as we move up market. So lots that we can do. We have so much in the way of technology chops in our company.
Josh Fertel
22:17
I love what you're doing. It needs to be so necessary.
Amy Crawford
22:20
Yeah, so I think we just continue to enhance our solution in different ways. We can use our automation.
Josh Fertel
22:26
Do you have a great client story. You said you know we really made a difference in this practice or this company's life.
Amy Crawford
22:33
Yes, actually, I think we have a few of those that come to mind, but the one that's jumping out at me at the moment would be one is a very large corporate dental group in the Northeast. When they signed up with us it was 2020. Obviously looking for ways for remote collection, they had about 25 offices at the time. They now have close to 80. They've gone through acquisition, so I think they're going to be in the 80, 85 range, and we've done a lot for them, not just on the patient payment side, but we've done a couple other projects with them in terms of automating some reporting with them.
23:22
In terms of automating some reporting, we recently also enabled surcharging which is not that popular in healthcare, which is passing the card fees on where you can to the patient. We're seeing that a bit more in dental and it's only available in certain states, but anyway, this is a group that has really grown with us over the last four years and we've established a great relationship with them and helped, I think, to support their ability to take on more practices.
Josh Fertel
23:51
Oh, that's great. Yeah, your company is just. I mean, it really is ahead of its time.
Amy Crawford
23:57
It is really is ahead of its time it is. I just reflect back again to where Shashi and I went down to Miami and I guess it must have been 20, maybe 17 or 18. And we were talking to a group of physicians about, again, card on file and text to pay and they just looked at us like we were crazy. It's fun to see where we've gone to, and now they're clients. And now they're clients, exactly, exactly so.
Josh Fertel
24:21
The. You know there's. No, obviously there's still a lot of ways room to grow in the industry, yes, as far as collecting. So I would say to you if there was some magic wand that I can give you that could make a change for the better in the field that you're in, what would you use it for?
Amy Crawford
24:39
Wow, oh gosh, I think it would be just. I think that this space has also been a bit they're a bit weary of technology. Absolutely. There's been a lot of maybe stop starts with other companies or things that aren't all they are, you know, cracked up to be. So I guess I would just say, if I had a wave of magic wand I would say you know, there are companies out there.
Josh Fertel
25:05
Be open.
Amy Crawford
25:06
Education, yeah, education. Be open and ready to Just to listen. Yeah, exactly, that's really all it takes. Yeah, yeah.
Josh Fertel
25:13
I appreciate that you came by it. Like I said earlier to me, this is the biggest that you came by it. Like I said earlier to me, this is the biggest sore to me as a practice when I'm trying to service. Practice is the inability to collect what's needed, and it changes cash flow, it changes profitability, it adds to expense when it's not done correctly, and so I really do appreciate the work that LQPay is doing and hopefully people will listen to this and give you a call. How can somebody reach you?
Amy Crawford
25:49
Thanks so much, josh, and again, thanks for having me. Absolutely, folks can visit www.lqpay.ai and learn more about us. Our contact information phone number, email is on the website and yeah, all the things you mentioned I couldn't agree more with, and I think the other thing I would add is workflow speed. Efficiency Really is key, all costs. But, yeah, check us out online. Lqpay.ai, yes, lqpay.ai, make sure we got that right.
26:20
Absolutely, and you know, folks can go there and sign up for a demo and one of our associates will, you know, get them scheduled and show them the demo and they can see the product in action.
Josh Fertel
26:31
That's great. Really appreciate you coming and talking about your company with us and hopefully you'll come back again, absolutely, talking about your company with us and hopefully you'll come back again, absolutely. I'd love to Thank you so much. You got it, thank you. Thank you for listening today. Please follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn and you can check us out at theangrybiller.com.
