THIS invention relates to a system and method of processing a health insurance transaction.
The processing of health insurance transactions occurs where a beneficiary of a health insurance plan, which may be either a member of the plan or a dependant of the member, receives a medical service or a medical product and then:                the member requests the health insurance plan or third party administrator to pay a third party service or product provider directly or to reimburse the member who has paid for the medical product or medical service; or        alternatively the third party service or product provider submits the transaction on behalf of the member to the health insurance plan or third party administrator to pay the third party service or product provider directly or to reimburse the member who has paid for the medical product or medical service.        
The present systems used to process these transactions are slow and very labor intensive with the transaction being sent to a system operated by a health insurance plan, third party administrator or via a third party clearing house. The health insurance plan, third party administrator or the third party clearing house adjudicates the transaction and assesses if it is covered by the member's health insurance plan and also, in some cases, to see if the member has funds available to cover the costs of the transaction.
However, the current labor intensive processing takes a number of days or weeks. Errors in the transaction submitted cause further delays with the transaction being rejected often without clear explanation and returned to the sender unprocessed.
There is therefore a need for a system and method that will process transactions in real-time and in a paperless way thereby enabling holistic financial and clinical patient management.
The present invention seeks to address this.