William C. Short

Patents

William C. Short's healthcare-payment patent, its continuation family, operation, and significance for many-to-many payment orchestration.

William C. Short is the named inventor of an issued U.S. patent covering technology for organizing, invoicing, collecting, and distributing healthcare payments among multiple payors and multiple payees. Accresa Health LLC is the assignee.

Issued patent: US 12,682,329 B2

What the patent covers

Although the title uses network-routing terminology, the patent is directed to healthcare-payment administration. Its abstract describes a computer system that:

  1. receives healthcare-service and invoice data from multiple payees, such as physicians, clinics, or other providers;
  2. groups the participants into a configurable instance governed by one or more healthcare plans;
  3. determines which payor or combination of payors is responsible for each charge;
  4. creates and transmits the appropriate invoices;
  5. receives funds from the responsible payors; and
  6. allocates and distributes those funds to the correct payees.

In practical terms, the system can accept money and information from multiple funding sources, apply eligibility and plan rules, and route the resulting payments to multiple healthcare providers. This is the “many-to-many” structure used in Accresa's public description of the technology.

The three principal claim groups

The issued patent contains 20 claims organized around three independent claims and their dependent claims:

  • Claim 1 — settling bundled healthcare invoices: a processor creates a group of payors and payees, receives bundled invoices, identifies financial responsibility under applicable healthcare plans, divides the invoice data, collects funds, and distributes them to payees.
  • Claim 8 — generating a payor's consolidated invoice: the system bundles healthcare-invoice data while allowing at least two payors to share responsibility for a charge.
  • Claim 14 — networked payment system: a server coordinates payor terminals, payee terminals, and a database to perform the invoicing, collection, and distribution process.

The dependent claims add narrower features, including grouping funds owed to a payee, waiting until all required funds have arrived before distribution, handling multiple payors for one charge, and paying multiple payees that contributed to a medical service.

Why the patent is significant

It addresses fragmented healthcare-payment relationships

Traditional payment workflows are often built around a single payor paying a single provider for an individual transaction. Employer-sponsored and subscription-based care can involve an employer, employee, health plan, administrator, broker, physician, clinic, hospital system, and other parties in the same arrangement. The patented system is designed to coordinate those relationships within one rules-based payment layer.

It can reduce repetitive billing and reconciliation

The claims expressly describe bundling data packets addressed to common payors and reducing the number of network transmissions. Operationally, consolidated invoicing and payment can reduce the need for providers to issue and reconcile separate transactions for every employer, member, or funding source. Employers and plan administrators can likewise receive invoices organized according to their plan obligations.

It supports newer care-delivery models

The payment structure can support direct primary care, direct-to-employer care, subscription medical services, centers of excellence, and other arrangements in which recurring funds must be divided accurately across several participants. The patent does not create those care models; it protects a particular computer-implemented approach to administering their complex financial relationships.

It connects eligibility rules to the movement of money

The system does more than transmit a payment. It determines responsibility using a custom participant group and healthcare-plan parameters, then uses those determinations to generate invoices and distribute funds. That connection among enrollment or eligibility data, plan rules, invoicing, and settlement is central to the patent's practical value.

It establishes a protected Accresa intellectual-property asset

An issued patent gives Accresa a defined U.S. intellectual-property right whose scope is determined by the allowed claims. It records Short as the inventor and Accresa Health LLC as the owner of the patent. The grant can support product differentiation, licensing, partnerships, and enforcement against implementations that fall within the claims. Whether any particular third-party product infringes is a claim-by-claim legal question; the patent does not confer ownership over every form of healthcare payment or every many-to-many transaction.

Patent-family chronology

US 12,682,329 is the result of a continuation chain extending to 2018:

  • 26 June 2018: U.S. application 16/018,524 filed.
  • 21 June 2019: U.S. application 16/449,111 filed as a continuation.
  • 7 September 2021: U.S. application 17/468,351 filed as a continuation-in-part and later published as US 2021/0406848 A1.
  • 15 August 2024: the application leading to the issued patent was filed as a continuation-in-part.
  • 6 February 2025: published as US 2025/0045716 A1.
  • 14 July 2026: issued as US 12,682,329 B2.

The long continuation history shows the development and prosecution of the invention over several applications. The enforceable grant discussed here is US 12,682,329 B2; the A1 publications document related applications and technical disclosures.

Relationship to Accresa

Accresa describes itself as a platform connecting payment, billing, provider-network management, and member enrollment for subscription care. The patent provides an intellectual-property foundation for the payment-orchestration component: collecting funds from multiple sources, applying the appropriate rules, and delivering consolidated payments and reporting to multiple providers.

VentureBeat's article reports Accresa's characterization of the patent and quotes Short as CEO. Promotional descriptions such as “groundbreaking” and assertions about being the “only” patented platform are company claims. The patent number, inventor, assignee, filing history, abstract, and allowed claims are matters of public patent record.