by Art Aldridge, Vice President of Technology
DataPath has been innovating software solutions for over three decades. Our founder saw potential in the benefits administration market, and under his guidance, we began blazing a path to new frontiers by developing software for tax-advantaged employer benefits back in the 1980s.
Over the course of the company’s history, we’ve sought to remain at the forefront of our industry as a technological leader. Not only do we work to provide the best products on the market, but we want our clients (and competitors) to know that we’re serious when it comes to innovation. This dogged focus has resulted in solutions for consumer driven healthcare account administration, premium billing and COBRA, and virtual and card payment solutions.
Developing the products and delivering them to market is only one piece of the puzzle. We are also determined to design our own product-enabling technologies in order to make our solutions unique and set us apart from the pack. With that goal in mind, some of the brilliant minds at DataPath have collaborated to earn three U. S. patents that are fundamental to the success of our product offerings.
Here’s a little background information on our patents (see abstracts at the end):
Prior to the US Treasury and IRS issuing regulatory guidance on the use of debit cards for approved medical expenses, the use of debit cards posed two problems. First, there was a 1099-MISC requirement since payments by card from the plan were considered employer payments to health providers. Second, the use of the debit card allowed distributions from these plans before a third-party could review the expense. However, issuing a credit card solved these problems by offering consumer credit. Paying by credit card did not use plan funds, and reimbursements to pay the card balance happened only after third-party review of the expenses. Patent US 7,661,586 was crucial to identifying and validating purchases made on those credit cards. DataPath’s patented system helped determine whether or not the purchase was eligible per IRS-approved medical expenses which drastically reduced the incidence of ‘pay and chase’ for employers.
Patents US 7,857,205 and 8,047,430 cover ClaimsVault™, a crucial tool for active HSA account owners and RelianceCard™ users. ClaimsVault works as an ‘electronic shoebox’, storing receipts and other pertinent documents (which are accessible any time), and is especially handy should the participant get audited over approved expenditures. In fact, ClaimsVault has been so successful in terms of both technology and popularity among account holders, that Summit, our cloud-based administrative platform for consumer directed healthcare accounts, includes the patented electronic storage system.
As you can see, DataPath’s ingenuity and product development go hand-in-hand. Truly, it is a great pleasure to work for a company whose commitment to excellence shines through in every facet of our work. It is that commitment that helped shape DataPath from the beginning and continues to carry us forward. After all, we’ve been in this industry longer than any of our competitors and we’re here to stay.
Patent abstracts
Patent US 7,661,586, ‘System and method for providing a credit card with back-end payment filtering’
- A credit card transaction processing system that, in various embodiments, is configured for: (1) receiving transaction data related to a reimbursable charge made on the credit card by a credit card holder; (2) analyzing the transaction data to determine whether the charge may be auto-substantiated; (3) in response to determining that the charge may be auto-substantiated, auto-substantiating the charge; and (4) in response to the charge being auto-substantiated, reimbursing the credit card holder for at least a portion of the charge substantially without human intervention.
Patents US 7,857,205 and 8,047,430, ‘Account administration plans and systems’
- A computer system for facilitating payments from an account according to particular embodiments of the invention is adapted for: (1) facilitating the transmission, to a plan service provider, of a first set of documentation of a first payment that would potentially qualify for reimbursement from the account; (2) receiving, from the plan service provider, verification that the first payment has been verified as qualifying for reimbursement from the account according to a set of reimbursement rules associated with the account; (3) storing, in memory, an electronic version of the first set of documentation; and (4) storing, in memory, an indication that the first payment has been verified as being properly reimbursable from the account.