nTelagent Partners Within Collection Industry to Help Healthcare Providers With Appropriate...

nTelagent Partners Within Collection Industry to Help Healthcare Providers With Appropriate Debt Collection, Patients' Rights

Affiliated Creditors Uses nTelagent's Data Mining Technology to
Improve Collection Process; Works to Ensure Proper Patient Accounts
Are Targeted and Patients' Rights Are Protected
NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(Business Wire)--
Today nTelagent, Inc., a next-generation revenue cycle company,
and Affiliated Creditors Incorporated (ACI), a collection company
serving primarily healthcare clients, have announced an innovative
partnership that helps hospitals and other healthcare service
providers to target appropriate patient accounts for debt collection
and to ensure patients' rights are protected.

"With the rise in self-pay accounts, healthcare service providers
must collect payment from individual patients regardless of insured or
uninsured status. Because most facilities do not have effective
systems in place, this is often an unsuccessful endeavor, which leads
to mounting bad debt within the industry," said Earl T. Winter,
chairman and CEO of nTelagent. "Many healthcare organizations turn to
collection agencies such as Affiliated Creditors to help them with
outstanding balances, giving these businesses enormous opportunities
to improve the collection process for the client and the patients they
care for."

ACI partnered with nTelagent to pursue these opportunities,
through implementation of nTelagent's proprietary web-based solution,
the Self-Pay Management System (SPMS). To learn more, download the
just-released case study titled "Collection Company Affiliated
Creditors Partners With nTelagent to Help Healthcare Clients With
Appropriate Debt Collection and Patients' Rights" at
www.ntelagent.com.

Chad Williams, CEO of ACI, said, "Because we were looking to
implement rapid technological advances in data mining and scoring,
nTelagent was the logical choice. Using available demographic
information, not credit score data, nTelagent's system identifies an
individual's capacity to pay, improving overall collection potential."
In addition, the system ensures protection of patients' rights by
applying the proper recovery strategies to each person's capacity to
pay.

nTelagent's technology helps ACI to more quickly and accurately
identify where the collectible dollars are by segmenting data into
usable, actionable categories. The system automatically provides ACI
with a grading system of a patient's capacity to pay, with a scale
going from low probability of paying to high probability. ACI can now
more effectively target those mid-to-high probability accounts. For
example, while it once took ACI 12 months or more to gain back its
return on investment (the company works on a contingency basis), it
now takes the company only about three months. In fact, since
implementing the nTelagent system in October 2007, the company has
broken its collection records month after month.

Another industry-wide issue that the nTelagent-ACI partnership
addresses is the fact that many providers do not accurately categorize
those patients eligible for charity care due to lack of effective
systems and demographic analytics, and they end up in collections or
marked as bad debt. "The effect nTelagent's system can have on a
hospital's charity care numbers is dramatic," continued Winter. "For
example, ACI ran one hospital client's accounts receivable numbers
through SPMS and showed that the hospital had improperly categorized
one-third of its charity care dollars."

In fact, according to a recent nTelagent study of over 40
healthcare providers' aged trial balance (ATB) reports, 50% of the
patient accounts that were written off as bad debt showed a capacity
to pay. An additional 17% of patient accounts that were written off as
bad debt had been classified as having low household income and/or low
net worth. This indicates that they could have been evaluated for
government assistance programs (e.g., Medicaid or local or state
programs) or charity care processing, but were not. Williams says that
he regularly is given accounts to collect that are basically
uncollectible because the patient is eligible for charity and
government programs. And this costs everyone unnecessary time and
money, and could potentially subject patients to unfair collection
practices.

About nTelagent, Inc.

Nashville-based nTelagent, Inc., a next-generation revenue cycle
company, has developed a proprietary technology platform, the Self-Pay
Management System (SPMS), that is revolutionizing the accounts
receivable processes for hospitals, physician practices and all other
healthcare service providers, in both inpatient and outpatient
settings. For providers, SPMS improves upfront and overall cash flow,
receivables and profitability by reducing bad debt and improving the
revenue cycle process for self-pay patients. The company's turnkey
technologies enable providers to consistently move workflow to the
front end of the revenue cycle, both pre-service and at the point of
service. Using non-credit scoring data, the SPMS provides registrars
and financial counselors with interactive scripts that integrate
patient demographic information with each provider's unique business
policies and rules. The system also automatically identifies
discounting and charity care options when applicable, ensuring that
patient financial accounting -- for both insured and uninsured
patients -- is handled appropriately and in a non-discriminatory
manner. Visit www.ntelagent.com for more information.

About Affiliated Creditors Incorporated

Since 1981, Affiliated Creditors, Inc. (ACI) has provided
innovative "debt recovery" solutions for its clients. From the start,
ACI has built a reputation of providing the best service to all of its
clients, large and small. ACI's motto -- "Your Collection Partner" --
stands for what the company is and what it believes. ACI is not just a
collection agency, but an extension of a client's business office.
ACI's successful experience and leadership, coupled with a "team-like"
atmosphere, helps the company's staff members easily customize and
adapt to a client's unique collection recovery needs in an efficient
and effective manner. These characteristics set ACI apart from
traditional agencies. Visit www.affiliatedcreditors.com for more
information.

Laura Campbell & Associates
Laura Campbell, President & CEO, 615-579-6599
laura@laura-campbell.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008