Medical data analysis service
First Claim
1. A method for allowing a given patient to manage health care expenses using a computer-implemented medical expense data analysis service, comprising:
- receiving health care provider statements from multiple health care providers and explanation of benefits documents from multiple insurance providers after patient responsibilities have been determined by the multiple health care providers and the multiple insurance providers;
with the computer-implemented medical expense data analysis service, checking medical expense data for the given patient that is associated with multiple insurance providers and multiple health care providers to detect billing and coverage errors, wherein the billing and coverage errors include mistakes and inconsistencies in the health care provider statements and the insurance provider explanation of benefits documents, and wherein checking the medical expense data comprises automatically discovering patterns and relationships in the medical expense data with data mining techniques;
maintaining at least one patient database containing the patient medical expense data and data on detected billing and coverage errors;
allowing the given patient to query the patient database; and
alerting the given patient to the identified billing and coverage errors.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A medical data analysis service is provided. The service may be implemented as an on-line service using a data analysis server. The data analysis server may maintain patient databases and a community database. Each patient database may be populated with patient medical expense data such as medical bills from health care providers and insurance statements from insurance providers. The service analyzes the data in the databases to identify potential errors. The system detects errors in billing and insurance coverage and enables the patient to query medical expense data. The system enables patient'"'"'s notes relating to these services to be easily tracked, queried and shared. The system enables a patient to derive additional knowledge from the medical expense and insurance coverage data. This knowledge can be queried by the patient. The system enables a patient to derive more knowledge from collective patient medical expense and insurance coverage data and annotations.
40 Citations
22 Claims
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1. A method for allowing a given patient to manage health care expenses using a computer-implemented medical expense data analysis service, comprising:
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receiving health care provider statements from multiple health care providers and explanation of benefits documents from multiple insurance providers after patient responsibilities have been determined by the multiple health care providers and the multiple insurance providers; with the computer-implemented medical expense data analysis service, checking medical expense data for the given patient that is associated with multiple insurance providers and multiple health care providers to detect billing and coverage errors, wherein the billing and coverage errors include mistakes and inconsistencies in the health care provider statements and the insurance provider explanation of benefits documents, and wherein checking the medical expense data comprises automatically discovering patterns and relationships in the medical expense data with data mining techniques; maintaining at least one patient database containing the patient medical expense data and data on detected billing and coverage errors; allowing the given patient to query the patient database; and alerting the given patient to the identified billing and coverage errors. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 21, 22)
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14. A method for allowing patients to obtain health care information using a computer-implemented medical expense data analysis service, comprising:
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anonymizing and analyzing patient medical expense data of multiple patients from multiple insurance providers and multiple health care providers to produce anonymized and analyzed patient medical expense data; with at least one data analysis server associated with the medical expense data analysis service, maintaining a searchable community database of the anonymized and analyzed patient medical expense data; in response to a given patient of the multiple patients using a web browser to access the searchable community database at the data analysis server over a communications network, automatically comparing the medical expense data of the given patent with the medical expense data of other patients in the searchable community database; and providing to the given patient results of the comparison of the medical expense data of the given patient with the medical expense data of the other patients in the searchable community database. - View Dependent Claims (15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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20. A method for allowing a given patient to manage health care expenses using a computer-implemented medical expense data analysis service, comprising:
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with at least one data analysis server associated with the medical expense data analysis service, maintaining multiple patient databases that include medical expense data for multiple patients from multiple insurance providers and multiple health care providers, wherein the multiple patients include the given patient; at the data analysis server, analyzing the medical expense data for the multiple patients from multiple insurance providers and multiple health care providers from the multiple patient databases to check for errors in the medical expense data of the given patient, wherein analyzing the medical expense data comprises automatically discovering patterns and relationships in the medical expense data with data mining techniques; at the given patient, using a web browser to access the data analysis server over a communications network; using the web browser to provide the given patient with results from analyzing the medical expense data with the data analysis server that indicate whether the medical expense data of the given patient contains errors; anonymizing and analyzing the medical expense data in the multiple patient databases for the multiple patients from multiple insurance providers and multiple health care providers to produce anonymized and analyzed patient medical expense data; at the analysis server, maintaining a searchable community database of the anonymized and analyzed patient medical expense data; in response to the given patient using a web browser to access the searchable community database at the data analysis server over a communications network, automatically comparing the medical expense data of the given patent with the medical expense data of other patients in the searchable community database.
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Specification