Medical technology firm SolutionReach is launching a mobile medical billing system that uses text to notify patients and provides an embedded link that allows direct payment via credit, debit, flexible spending or health savings card via a smartphone.

The Lehi, Utah-based firm said the system is more efficient than traditional paper-based billing,  as it often takes two to three invoices on a 30-day billing cycle for patients to make payments, according to a press release.

The company cited data from Becker's Hospital Review showing that patients paid $423.8 billion in bills in 2016, however about $126 billion went unpaid that same year. The goal is to use text-based invoicing to speed up the response time and get more medical bills paid in a timely manner.

"Medical billing is complex and it often takes a long time to get paid," Jim Higgins, founder and CEO of SolutionReach, said in the release. "At the end of the day, every healthcare organization is also a business with bills to pay, and they spend too much time trying to collect payment."

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