The end goal of patient billing is simple, but the process can be highly complex. With several moving parts and multiple key players to account for, your patient-pay team can fail to generate revenue if one critical piece is missing: consistency.
What Happens if Your Billing Lacks Consistency
Inconsistent billing practices may only seem like an inconvenience, but a 10,000-foot view reveals an alarming truth — inconsistent patient billing drains revenue. Why? Because your patients are more likely to follow through when they aren’t confused and know what to expect.
However, for many patients, medical bills are confusing and overwhelming. According to a 2023 survey, 48% of patients do not understand their financial responsibility.1 Factoring in irregular billing outreach and unclear payment options, practices that fail to prioritize the patient experience risk delayed payments, higher collection costs, and lower patient satisfaction, a trend that motivates 56% of patients to switch their providers.2
A lack of critical consistency can exacerbate billing inefficiencies, creating a greater threat to practice profitability and growth.
Three Areas in Need of Consistency
Revenue leaks are all too common in practice revenue cycle management. Despite front-end challenges, many sources of leakage are found in the patient billing and collections stage. For most practices, the patient-pay process lacks consistency in three key areas:
- Billing-related outreach. Reaching out to patients is mission-critical for practice revenue. Alerting patients once their bill has been posted may motivate some payments, but many will either forget or wait to pay. This financial responsibility must stay top of mind, meaning your team should engage in regular outreach for any outstanding balances.
- Communication style. When it comes to patient billing, details matter. Don’t complicate the process with unpredictable and seemingly random communication that only serves to confuse your patients. When you send a statement or a message, your patients should immediately recognize your brand and remember that it’s time to make a payment. This requires consistent timing, design, and origination of all patient communication.
- Access to billing information. Now more than ever, patients are taking a consumer-like approach to their healthcare. Convenience and ease of access are the name of the game, putting the onus on your practice to provide all relevant billing data on one easy-to-find and easy-to-use platform. All of your outreach efforts should seamlessly redirect patients to this platform so they can easily make a payment.
How PatientFocus Can Help
Consistency is the key to unlocking patient-pay revenue potential, and PatientFocus is the ideal partner to help you drive patient billing success. Our mission is to put patients first, and we do so by making the billing process as convenient and stress-free as possible. The PatientFocus all-in-one solution prioritizes consistency by handling all billing outreach from day one with a uniform communication style. Our personalized statements, emails, and phone calls synchronize with a mobile-friendly web portal, making it easier than ever for patients to pay their bills.
Reach out to our team today to learn more about how PatientFocus can help your practice deliver a consistent patient pay process that maximizes collections and boosts patient satisfaction.
Sources:
- HPS/PayMedix. Paying for Healthcare Creates Increased Physical, Mental, and Financial Health Concerns for Insured Americans [Press Release]. (2023, June 6). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paying-for-healthcare-creates-increased-physical-mental-and-financial-health-concerns-for-insured-americans-301840915.html
- 2023 Voice of the Patient Survey. (2023). RevSpring. https://storage.pardot.com/855813/1676933686NzZIWtKM/VoiceOfThePatientSurvey2023_WP_2_20_2023.pdf
