A company known for pushing health information technology into the hands of physicians is now offering solutions for getting them paid.

Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions announced two new partnerships this week that are designed to help patients pay their bills quicker and more efficiently. The Chicago-based provider of electronic medical record and practice management solutions, among many other products, is making a play to reduce bad debt, which costs the medical industry an estimated $300 billion per year.

Allscripts has announced an alliance with Intuit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of Quicken software, to integrate a new product, Quicken Health Bill Pay, into the company’s physician practice management and revenue cycle management applications, now being used by roughly 110,000 physicians around the country. The new solution enables patients to understand and pay their bills online, allowing physicians to get paid, on average, 18 days faster.

While surveys indicate as much as 90 percent of patient payments are made by paper check, that percentage is decreasing with the advent of online healthcare management solutions like health savings accounts (HSAs) and flexible spending accounts (FSAs), as well as technology that allows physicians and patients to determine medical bills at the point of care.

“When patients have the knowledge and confidence that a bill is correct, payments are made faster and billing managers spend less time, money and effort repeatedly sending paper statements, answering questions and calling patients about payments due,” said Peter Karpas, president and division general manager of Intuit’s Quicken Health Group, in a press release. “With Quicken Health Bill Pay, Allscripts can offer its clients the unique ability to present absolutely clear bills and the 24/7 convenience of receiving fully protected online payments.”

According to Allscripts officials, patient payments are becoming the fastest growing portion of a provider’s revenue stream. Direct out-of-pocket payments from patients to providers are expected to total $660 billion by 2013, more than doubling payments made in 2005. However, many practices write off as much as 50 percent of patient payments as bad debt, and research shows that 40 percent of patients don’t pay their medical bills simply because they don’t understand the bill or didn’t think they were responsible for the amount due.

“Physician practices want to spend their time providing great patient care, not collecting patient bills and posting paper checks to their system,” said Glen Tullman, Allscripts’ CEO. “Allscripts has the solution to one of our clients’ most pressing needs by providing clear, convenient online billing and fully secure online payments for patients via Quicken Health Bill Pay.”

Also this week, Allscripts is partnering with Minneapolis-based mPay Gateway to provide its point-of-care patient payment technology to Allscripts clients. Allscripts Patient Payment Assurance, powered by mPay Gateway, is designed to allow patients, while in the physician’s office, to see their portion of the bill and that portion which would be covered by insurance and pay their share with a debit or credit card.

“Customers using Allscripts Patient Payment Assurance now have the opportunity to decrease administrative hassles typically associated with patient payments,” said Lee Shapiro, president of Allscripts. “This technology allows providers to calculate the patient responsibility and obtain payment authorization before the patient leaves the office. This eliminates billing hassles and ultimately enhances the provider-patient relationship.”

“We are excited to extend our offering to the tens of thousands’ physicians and other healthcare providers who already use Allscripts awarding-winning practice management and revenue cycle management solutions,” said Brian Beutner, mPay Gateway’s CEO. “Practices using mPay Gateway are actually preventing overdue and uncollectible patient accounts. In fact, we have seen practices cut their patient payment receivables in half by utilizing our technology.”