Total System Services Inc.’s TSYS Healthcare unit has inked an agreement with Lighthouse1 LLC that it says will enhance its offerings of consumer-directed health care payments, including enabling consolidation of consumer health care payments onto a single payment card.
Lighthouse1, one of several TSYS partners in its health care payments services unit, will provide a Web-based administrative platform for live account management and claims adjudication. This will eliminate steps, including the need to reconcile payments between different systems, according to TSYS, which established its health care payments unit in 2007.
“Through platforms like the one we’ve established with Lighthouse, we’re simplifying the process of using health care payment accounts so that consumers can go to a single site to manage their accounts and make payments through one card with multiple purses for various accounts,” Mark O’Leary, TSYS senior vice president of health care, tells PaymentsSource.
These technological improvements, combined with passage in March of a health care reform bill, which left existing tax-exempt health savings accounts intact, are conspiring to drive greater penetration and use of debit cards tied to health care accounts, O’Leary contends (
“The health care bill (passing) cleared the air in the industry,” O’Leary says. “The bill also contained some provisions that are going to encourage insurance companies and employers to use health care payment accounts for wellness incentives, which we expect will drive further use of health care debit cards.”
Technology improvements are making it easier for banks, health care payers and consumers to tie their health care benefits together into simple-to-use tools, he says.
TSYS says it serves four major banks in the health care payments arena, including U.S. Bancorp, First Horizon National Corp. and two others it has not disclosed.
U.S. Bank last month announced the rollout of what it is says is the first product consolidating multiple types of employer-sponsored health care benefits and reimbursements on a single payment card consumers can manage through the bank’s website (
