Workgroups & Initiatives

The Medical Banking Project supports initiatives that demonstrate medical banking in action. Initially we implemented a series of workgroups to tackle emerging industry issues challenges. Linking banking and healthcare systems is a complex endeavor that requires broad industry input into areas of policy, technology and business processes.

In 2006, MBProject redirected its energies from general workgroup areas (see below) to discrete industry initiatives. These efforts yield standards and best practices recommendations that will be aggregated into a "Common Standards Guide" (or Standards Panel) that will be disseminated to medical banking constituencies.

The leadership at MBProject believes that a common medical banking platform of standards is required to advance this emerging niche', and so we invest membership dues into programs and activities that support this critical goal for the industry.

Areas of Focus and Leadership:

• Accreditation Review Council: Leadership: Ken Kubala, VP Senior New Business Development Manager, Bank of New York Mellon Treasury Services. The mission of this workgroup is to "instill public trust in medical banking programs". A Gold Seal program for medical banking constituencies has been designed by a cross-industry group of leading banking and healthcare firms after a 15 month review of relevant banking and healthcare laws surrounding health data privacy and security and an environmental scan of existing accreditation programs.

• Dispute Resolution Initiative: Leadership: Sheila Schweitzer, CEO & Chairperson, CareMedic. The workgroup, launched at the 2007 Leadership Forum, is creating an approach for rationalizing myriad denial codes in claims processing. The work product is being placed into production as a free resource on the MBProject website.

• Joint Taskgroup for Value In Health: Leadership: James Patterson, Director of Total Health Management, Arvin Meritor. Co-Leader: Matthew Carberry, Vice President, Payments Divison, New Business Development, The Bancorp Bank. Co-Leader: Mark Keck, EVP, TriHealix. The group, in conjunction with AIAG, is drafting a "Medical Banking Tool Kit" for employers that contains a new Standards Panel - listing of best practices in medical banking. The Standards Panel is overseen by the Chair, Standards for the President's Council, Mary Rita Hyland, VP, Legislative Affairs, SSI Group.

• HIE (Healthcare Information Exchange) Focus Group: Leadership: Mike Snitman, TransUnion. The focus group examines the adaptation of banking systems to deliver PHRs to some 55 million American households who currently enjoy online banking for their financial services.

• Workflow Automation Focus Group: Leadership: Todd Slocumb, VP, Revenue Management Solutions (RMS); Co-Leader: Christine Smith, Product Manager-Remittance Solutions, Wausau Financial Systems. The focus group isolates barriers to the adoption of the specialized lockbox program for healthcare and isolates and documents emerging best practices.

• HSA Workgroup: Leadership: David Harris, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers. This group brings the latest CDH issues to our members through bi-monthly online calls. The group published an HSA Deductible Engine Model that was formed within the C.O.M.B.A.T. Initiative.