As daisyNews has warned providers, accepting virtual credit card (VCC) payments for workers’ comp treatment is financial self-sabotage.

Below, we outline how daisyCollect is helping a provider to stop accepting these costly and wasteful virtual credit cards that payment vendors, including VPay, Zelis, QuicRemit, and others, are sending instead of checks.

When a provider accepts a VCC payment, the practice incurs high fees ranging from 2% to 5% of the total payment. These fees profit credit card companies, VCC payment vendors, and payers that receive rebates or revenue sharing from those fees, all at providers’ expense.

Over time, the fees can add up to serious (and pointless) revenue loss for the practice. Despite this, many doctors accept VCC payments based on:

• The (erroneous) belief that providers have to accept credit cards
• A (dubious) promise of faster payment

However, accepting VCC payments for workers’ comp treatment is optional and inadvisable. We strongly urge all providers to:

1. Choose a date to discontinue running VCCs for payment.
2. Contact the applicable VCC payment vendors.
3. Opt out of all VCC payments for all payers, permanently.

Below are the details needed to stop VCCs from draining your reimbursement for treating injured workers.

The False Promise of VCC Payments

For group health patients, it makes sense for doctors to incur credit card fees. Credit cards can be the difference between getting a co-pay or deductible at the time of the visit, versus mailing the patient a bill and waiting.

Workers’ comp is not group health.

Absorbing 2%, 3%, or 5% of a workers’ comp bill totaling hundreds or thousands of dollars doesn’t make financial sense. Extrapolate those usurious percentages over a week, month, or year, and VCCs do real damage to your bottom line.

Payers or their VCC vendors often “sell” providers on VCC payments by promising faster payment. However, states determine payment deadlines by statute or regulation, and many already require quick payment of electronic bills (e-bills). California, for example, requires e-bill payment within 15 business days.

Moreover, payment by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) is a rapid and cost-free option for providers in every state.

In other words, you don’t have to accept VCC payments to get paid quickly in the era of e-billing. Payers reimburse daisyBill providers in 9.1 days on average nationwide, 11 days in New York, and two days for most providers in Colorado.

How to Escape VCC Payments

Several companies act as VCC payment vendors for workers’ comp payers, including but not limited to:

• VPay
• Zelis
• QuicRemit

When your practice receives a VCC payment, the Explanation of Review (EOR) includes contact information for the VCC payment vendor (in the example below, a VCC payment from Third-Party Administrator Gallagher Bassett included contact information for QuicRemit).

We urge all providers treating injured workers to:

1. Select a date to stop processing all VCC payments.
2. From that day forward, do not “run” the card whenever your practice receives a VCC payment.
3. Contact the VCC payment vendor using the information that came with the EOR.
4. Decline the VCC payment (and all future VCC payments).
5. Request that payment be reissued in check form.

daisyCollect: VCC Opt-Out Log

Below is a table of daisyCollect’s efforts to systematically opt out of all VCC payments for a single provider client.

As the table shows, opting out may require some administrative effort (Zelis was the only one to allow providers to opt out for all payers with a single call). However, the long-term savings in needless credit card fees are more than worth it.

Providers who accept credit card payments are getting a raw deal; don’t be one of them.

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