History
Althought the Zuelke Automated Credit Coach (ZACC) was released in February 2009, it has been many years in development.
Paul Zuelke first learned how to identify risk, and to grant credit appropriate to that risk, in 1970 when he went to work for Beneficial National Bank. In 1980, he started Zuelke & Associates, and used what he had learned to teach doctors (medical and dental) that they could dramatically improve their case acceptance and practice growth by being tremendously liberal in credit granting with the patients deserving of that flexibility. The catch is, of course, that they must also be restrictive in credit granting with patients not deserving of liberal credit. Finally, doctors had to have the technology to be able to identify risk. Twenty-nine years later, with more than 1000 private clients and many more non clients who follow what we Paul teaches, history has proven that the system works.
About ten years ago, Mr. Zuelke wrote an algorithm to teach a computer how to interpret information on a patient history document and to use that information to make a credit decision based on the responsible party’s maturity and stability in the community. At that time, Mr. Zuelke created an algorithm that was able to obtain and interpret credit scores and use that information to assign a final usable “Zuelke” credit grade. He knew the product would work but the huge cost of creating and marketing the program, if not beyond his financial means, was at least beyond his risk tolerance and he shelved the idea.
In 2008, Brett Blake of Acceptx Financial Solutions, Inc., learned that Mr. Zuelke had this somewhat conceptual product. He offered to fund its development and together they created the Zuelke Automated Credit Coach (ZACC). In 2009, OrthoBanc, LLC. purchased ZACC from Acceptx.
ZACC has already been integrated into the IMS orthodontic practice management software system and Dolphin has announced plans to introduce it later in 2009.
The algorithm is designed to read and accurately interpret every line and every column of an actual credit report. That, along with the maturity and stability information, has allowed us to create a credit grading product that is highly accurate in identifying the lowest risk, the greatest risk, and all those in between. ZACC takes very limited and basic information from the Patient History document, obtains and reads real-time credit data (supplied by TransUnion) and returns one of 7 credit grades, along with the recommended minimum down payment (if any) and the maximum recommended contract length, all in about 5 seconds! The grading system is currently accessed online but soon practices will have ZACC integrated into their Practice Management software, if they wish to use the feature, credit grades will instantly appear once they enter the new patient information.
It is important to note that the ZACC inquiry does not show up as an inquiry on the patient’s credit report and does not in any fashion influence or impact the patient’s credit score.
This product works and it works very well! It will be a tremendous tool to those medical and dental practices who desire to be more financially flexible in order to obtain improved case acceptance. It will be of great value to your doctors who want to avoid taking inappropriate risk with the worst segment of our patient population. Knowing a patient’s/responsible party’s credit grade is highly valuable as well to a financial coordinator or to hospital collection agents who have to conduct collection activity on a delinquent account. Best of all, ZACC is inexpensive. There is a one time only “sign-up” fee of $149. Beyond that, there are no other monthly or annual costs of any kind other than a low fee per inquiry. That is a very small price to pay for a practice to know, for certain, that the patient is a person of high stability and financial integrity – or not! We believe that the value of knowing that a prospective patient has never missed a payment to anyone is huge. The value of knowing that the prospective patient has never paid a bill in his life is no less substantial.
