Patent ID: 8799015

Claim:
A method of wellcare management comprising: (a) enrolling a plurality of wellcare providers; (b) enrolling one or more consumers for each enrolled provider; (c) for each provider, offering a plurality of different customized wellcare plans to consumers; (d) allowing the consumers to select from the wellcare plan offerings; (e) permitting consumers to enroll one or more patients, wherein one consumer is permitted to enroll a plurality of patients, each patient into a different plan; (f) for each consumer, obtaining contact and financial information sufficient to permit automated collection by a merchant processor of a periodic payment associated with the selected wellcare plan; (g) for each provider, obtaining financial information sufficient to permit payment of service fees to the provider from the wellcare manager; (h) collecting and/or processing periodic payments from consumers using automated payment management including approval and/or decline notification and management thereof; (i) for each consumer enrolled, managing renewals and/or nonrenewals; and (j) providing access over a network via a secure portal to providers and consumers to information about the wellcare plans and payments; wherein steps (a) through (j) occur on one or more computer networks and at least step (j) further comprises, for either or both consumers or providers, data processing elements controlling one or more of: (1) registering the consumer or provider as a user of the computer network via the secure portal (2) entering a user name and password; (3) authenticating the user name or password to generate an authenticated user; (4) restricting the authenticated user to only information pertinent to that user; (5) directing information input by the user to an appropriate module for further processing; and (6) follow up communication between two or more modules or between the consumer, the provider and/or the wellcare manager regarding information input by a user.